June 26, 2025
Our data director, trina reynolds-tyler, gave the Juneteenth keynote last week at the National Public Housing Museum. Her speech reflects on how big promises—like freedom or new public policy—often come without real follow-through, leaving impacted communities to deal with the confusion, delays, and fallout on their own. Below is an excerpt from her remarks.
“[Juneteenth teaches us that] to declare freedom is not enough. Freedom requires integrity—a plan to bring people together, to unite the whole—with honesty, transparency, and accountability. But too often, what we see instead is a history of public policies that claim to improve society, yet come with no guarantees and ask people to remain quiet and wait for a check that may never come.
Slavery Remembered is the first major attempt to analyze the slave narratives gathered as part of the Federal Writers’ Project. Paul Escott’s examination of nearly 2,400 narratives and his quantitative analysis of the narratives as a whole present the differing beliefs and experiences of masters and slaves. This analysis shows that nearly immediately the narratives about the laziness of Black people began to spawn in that moment; justifying whatever damage slaveholders would do to continue to violate their human rights.
As we stand in the National Museum of Public Housing, I would be remiss if I didn't speak on the Plan for Transformation, and its parallels with this particular moment in time.
At the start of the Transformation, disseminating and receiving accurate, up-to-date information was challenging for both residents and staff. Years of mismanagement and poor service had also resulted in low levels of trust in the information shared and commitments made by the Chicago Housing Authority. Also due to bureaucratic errors, CHA lost track of many of the public-housing residents whose homes were demolished. The people scattered.
In the case of the Civil War, there were rumors that the Yankees were killing slaves; sowing the idea that people should be afraid, and accept what suffering they already knew. For some, they didn't trust what the future held. If they were to look at the past to determine the future, it was unclear. There was no blueprint. Once finally relieved from their enslavement; the labor fell on them to make move.
[...] Although it’s more challenging to read and process the narratives of formerly enslaved people recorded shortly after emancipation, we can learn a great deal about the broader Plan for Transformation by examining the stories found in police misconduct records and other public archives. These narratives—while imperfect—have become more accessible and structured over time, as documentation of human rights abuses has grown.
We have yet to fully acknowledge what has passed and the impact these decisions have had on people that reverberate within our communities today.
While we still don’t have a full picture of the impact of the environment shaped by that Plan, my colleagues at the Invisible Institute and I have worked tirelessly to bring these stories to light."