Boston Scraps Reparations Report Amid Allegations Lead Researcher Fabricated Claims in Her Book on Slavery

Boston officials have canceled a reparations report, which was already three years behind schedule, as the lead researcher looking into the role the city played in the trans-Atlantic slave trade, Kerri K. Greenidge, a former Tufts University professor, has been accused of making false statements in her celebrated book about slavery. Boston officials passed an ordinance in 2022 to explore the possibility of providing reparations to black residents. The city government allocated $500,000 to hire two research teams to explore different periods of the city’s history. One portion of the report, which examined discrimination against black residents after 1940, has been completed. However, it is unclear if that portion will be released as the first part of the report, which was supposed to examine slavery and its legacy at Boston from the 17th century to the mid-20th century has been nixed amid the scrutiny of Ms. Greenidge’s 2022 book on slavery, “The Grimkes.” The book was initially celebrated by the New York Times Book Review, and Publishers Weekly named it one of the 10 best books in 2022. But scholars later raised doubts about the accuracy of her work. In a joint statement, the city of Boston and Tufts said officials “have reluctantly come to a decision to cancel the contract for the first volume of the report.”“The faculty member who had been leading the project is no longer employed by the university,” the statement added.Tufts said that it had not been able to find a researcher to replace Ms. Greenidge with the “subject-matter expertise necessary to deliver a report meeting the standard that the City and the University both expect.”Tufts has refunded the $335,000 the city had paid for the report. The chairman of the task force set up to explore the idea of reparations, Joseph D. Feaster Jr., told the Boston Globe that the committee could not authenticate the work conducted by the Tufts research team and determined that it could not be included in the final report. Ms. Greenidge was accused of making false claims in her book and not properly crediting sources. A retired American history professor, Myra Glenn, raised questions about “The Grimkes” in an article published in Reviews in American History, which is published by Johns Hopkins University Press. The book tells the story of the 19th-century Grimke sisters, Sarah and Angelina, who grew up on a plantation in South Carolina but became “firebrand activists in the North,” advocating for abolition, according to the book’s description. Ms. Glenn wrote that Ms. Greenidge’s book is “well-written” but “all too often lacks the evidence to substantiate many of her major claims.”“Her work is also riddled with factual errors and repeatedly omits needed endnotes,” Ms. Glenn said.The former professor noted that the book included a story of the Grimke sisters leading “thousands of antislavery women through prayer” during an antiabolitionist attack on Pennsylvania Hall. Ms. Greenidge wrote that the Grimke sisters helped the women escape the building. However, Ms. Glenn said that “numerous sources” have reported that the building was empty during the attack. Ms. Greenidge, who is black, defended her book. She told the New York Times in July that questions about her work were part of an “attack on black women in academics.”Ms. Greenidge also denied that she fabricated any details of her book, and said she did not plagiarize. However, she told the Times that there were citations in her book that “probably” were “misattributed.”

Boston Scraps Reparations Report Amid Allegations Lead Researcher Fabricated Claims in Her Book on Slavery

Boston Scraps Reparations Report Amid Allegations Lead Researcher Fabricated Claims in Her Book on Slavery

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