Features

An Agent of Change

Jessica Muench ’04 notes that it was tough having the flagship program of the diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) strategy she built at United Airlines be criticized by both Tucker Carlson and Trevor Noah. Depending on the pundit, the program was either too risky or too performative. But she knew they wouldn’t be talking about it if the change weren’t real.

It was the first time a major airline had done something like it: taken material steps to remedy the remarkable demographic homogeneity among United States pilots. Only 6 percent of U.S. pilots are women, and only 7 percent are people of color.

In the wake of the murder of George Floyd that catalyzed protests across the country and conversations about equity and opportunity for Black Americans, United launched its United Aviate Academy. The only flight school operated by a major U.S. airline, its goal was to address the lack of awareness and access to the profession by attracting more diversity into the pipeline, thus addressing the pilot shortage.

Muench, the company’s chief diversity, equity, and inclusion officer, notes that the academy was launched with the goal of having at least 50 percent of the program’s enrollees be women or people of color. The first class exceeded that, reaching 80 percent.

During a broadcast, Carlson characterized the program’s diversity goal as dangerous and life-threatening. Noah called it a “perfectly sensible step,” but criticized United for “wanting to get a pat on the back, for [expletive] they should have been doing all along.”

Of the national pundit dialog, Muench says, “I was upset initially, but it actually helped by raising awareness and attracting more applicants.” She also countered that Carlson ignored the program’s high admittance and training standards.

Awareness within the company itself started, as it often does, with internal discussions.

Just months before Floyd’s murder in May 2020, Muench had another tough job. She was working as managing director in United’s human resources department at the height of the COVID19 pandemic, when demand for air travel had dropped to zero. She helped the company negotiate with labor unions and employees to find the best way to reduce labor costs through as many voluntary leaves and separations as possible, and to minimize the involuntary separations that were inevitable.

While in the thick of that difficult decision-making, she also volunteered her time to lead United’s business resource group for women, advocating for gender equity issues within the company.

After Floyd’s murder, United’s executive leadership selected her to lead the company’s reimagined diversity, equity, and inclusion strategy. And that, she says, is when her most meaningful work started.

She also asked questions.

“In some organizations, especially in the past, DEI leaders have been figureheads and not empowered to make real change,” Muench says. “I didn’t want to take it on unless I had the ability to make change where we can see measurable progress and hold people accountable for their behaviors and performance.”

The answers she received, she says, let her know “the appetite for change was there.” In transforming the company’s DEI approach, Muench says she and other leaders grappled with finding the right mix of dialogue and taking action quickly.

“Both are important,” Muench notes. “It’s important to clearly articulate our vision for how we want to shape the future, to put action plans in place to get there, and to hold ourselves accountable as we progress along the path toward that vision.”

As one example, part of United’s vision, Muench says, is to have, at every level of the organization, a workforce that “better reflects the diversity of the communities it serves.” To understand its “baseline,” United began regularly reporting its demographic representation data, including gender, race, and ethnicity. The company set goals, starting with the inclusion of underrepresented groups on interview slates and increased accountability by tying outcomes to executive compensation.

Now, two years in, the strategy that Muench built has impacted not only hiring and promoting talent from underrepresented backgrounds, but also in prioritizing contracting with businesses owned by underrepresented groups. She’s worked to ensure “inclusive customer experiences,” such as meals culturally relevant to global destinations, and has implemented a cultural awareness training for crews that resulted in greater customer and employee satisfaction. She’s also influenced investment in new community partnerships, including a strategic approach to relationships with Historically Black Colleges and Universities (HBCUs).

“We have a very powerful role to play in creating economic opportunity as a major employer and a huge purchaser of goods and services, and we can lead the way for others as we shape the future,” Muench says.

Increasing the enrollment of women and people of color in the flight school was one way of using that power, and Muench is now focused on doing the same thing for aviation maintenance technician careers with United’s recently launched technician apprenticeship program. The need to diversify that area of the workforce is apparent particularly for women, Muench notes, as technicians are currently 97 percent men.

Muench thinks back to her time growing up in Gary, Indiana, when it wasn’t clear what career paths were viable and most likely to lead to more opportunity. Now she wants to pay it forward. 

“I never thought about working for an airline. In my community the most readily available paths were jobs at the steel mill or casino or as a teacher. Now, I’m in a position where I am able to open doors to spaces where people who look like me have been intentionally or unintentionally excluded,” she says.

As the daughter of steel workers, Muench grew up accompanying her parents to labor protests, picket lines, and long nights at union meetings. Her mother, intent on parents like herself being active in her union, introduced on-site child care at their union hall. Since childhood her father, who represented his coworkers as union griever, encouraged her to be a civil rights attorney.

Watching them advocate for themselves and their coworkers in the workplace is what inspired Muench to pursue her law degree with a labor and employment certification from Chicago-Kent College of Law. When she decided to take her first job representing management, her parents had questions.

“It doesn’t matter what side you’re on, you can do justice and find a balance of power and interests between union, employer, and employee,” she told her parents. They came around.

Muench has taken a unique path from law school to corporate leadership. She started her career representing the City of Chicago. During law school, she earned her 711 license and built her courtroom experience arguing administrative hearings. After graduation, she moved to the law department’s labor division, representing city departments, like police, fire, and water, in labor arbitrations to resolve discipline, discharge, and contractual disputes. She also defended the city against harassment and discrimination claims. She later was promoted to deputy general counsel in the city’s procurement department, resolving contractual disputes and debarring vendors who falsely claimed minority-owned status.

Muench was then recruited to work for former Illinois Governor Pat Quinn as his associate general counsel, and was subsequently appointed to the Illinois Labor Relations Board in 2010.

At that time, one of her Chicago-Kent professors, Marty Malin, offered Muench a tip: United was looking for a labor and employment attorney. Muench was intrigued by the opportunity to lead in a corporate setting. In the midst of the merger of United and Continental Airlines, she was hired on as counsel for labor and employment.

Her success there led to a promotion to lead a team of arbitration lawyers as a managing director in human resources and labor relations. She says these experiences made her the perfect fit to lead in her current role as head of DEI.

She’s now had some time to reflect on that role, and what it’s meant to both her and the company. Recently, as she got ready to report to the company’s Board of Directors for the fourth time, Muench kept coming back to how the values of corporations are now highly scrutinized by investors, customers, and employees. She’s confident, she says, that she’s “helped United live more fully into its purpose and values.”

“DEI will be how we will appeal to future talent and customers, and meet many of our businesses’ goals including hiring 50,000 people over five years,” Muench says.

“Leading with our purpose and values is good for the business, and it’s what’s right.”

“The word power, I’ll acknowledge, is a complicated one. Because power itself is not inherently good or bad. It can be a force of dominance and oppression, or it can be a way of leading in a way that empowers others.…Your ethics and judgment, together with an understanding of our justice system— that is powerful. And how will you use that power to shape politics, economics, criminal and civil law? To find the common ground in compromises that will heal this divided world, you will need to be bold about addressing the injustices that you find in it.” —Jessica Muench ’04, at Chicago-Kent 2022 Commencement

A Legacy of Equity

Some described it as an awakening, a way for aspiring attorneys from poor or underrepresented backgrounds to envision themselves in the realm of the law.

“Looking back on it now, I probably wouldn’t have been in law school without the PLUS program,” says Cristina McNeiley, who graduated from Chicago-Kent College of Law in 2020. “That program changed my life. I think a lot of diverse students just really need someone to believe in us and our ability as lawyers. And Chicago-Kent did that.”

The national Pre-Law Undergraduate Scholars (PLUS) program was created at a time when questions about race permeated law school admissions offices across the country. Now, decades later—as discussions about race have only grown in importance—the program is getting unprecedented interest.

And of the dozens of PLUS programs across the country, Chicago-Kent’s is the oldest.

With 20 years, three directors, and numerous fundraising efforts since it kicked off in 2002, Chicago-Kent’s PLUS program still operates as a place where undergraduates can try out the law school experience. Targeting students who are underrepresented in the profession, it consists mostly of minorities who live with each other for days, debating and encouraging the spark of an idea that is law school.

“It’s way more intense than what most undergrads are used to. You get down to the nitty gritty of it,” says Michael McGee, who attended Chicago-Kent’s PLUS program in 2016 and graduated from Chicago-Kent in 2020. He’s now an assistant district attorney for Kings County, New York.

“I don’t know if I’d be where I am without it.”

“If you can’t see it, you can’t be it,” says Chicago-Kent’s current PLUS program Director Marsha Ross-Jackson. “I just want to make sure we don’t lose people who are right at the door.”

A Program Birthed Out of National Debate

The idea for the PLUS program came to Camille deJorna while she was working in admissions at the University of Iowa College of Law in the late 1990s.

At the time, there was some pushback against affirmative action, particularly following Hopwood v. Texas, a 1996 United States appeals court decision that held that the University of Texas School of Law could not use race as a factor when measuring applicants.

“At the height of affirmative action, law schools were thinking about becoming more diverse. Clearly there was pushback against that, and still is today,” says deJorna, who is currently deputy for legal education at the Law School Admission Council.

DeJorna, who, at that time,chaired the LSAC’s volunteer minority affairs committee, wanted to come up with a way to boost minority enrollment in law schools—one that avoided students having to “check a box on race,” she says. That way, they could avoid the ramifications set by the Hopwood case.

High school students enrolled in Chicago-Kent’s PLUS program engage in mock trial arguments.

It wasn’t difficult to see that there weren’t many Black applicants at Iowa, deJorna adds. And so, “We wanted students in the sophomore year (of college) to begin thinking about the [Law School Admission Test], and courses that might enhance their critical thinking skills,” deJorna says. To address inequities in their background, “We really wanted to introduce students of color to a graduate and professional-level education.”

She brought her idea to the LSAC board, which took interest.

“It was a realization that we needed to go back further in the educational experience, because many of the candidates were disadvantaged from day one,” says Kent Lollis, who headed LSAC’s initial effort to institute the program. “The earlier the pipeline started, the better.”

Normally pushing such an ambitious program might be difficult, no matter which agency attempted it. But Lollis notes that the push for PLUS had a big advantage: The year that it was proposed, there had been a big drop in admissions at law schools nationwide.

“Many of the board members were admissions directors, and the bottom fell out of the application process. It was a significant drop,” says Lollis, who was an admissions director at the time. “That was when the board unanimously voted in favor of the PLUS program.”

They chose two schools to take on the experiment, each getting $100,000 a year for at least three years.

Chicago-Kent was one of them.

Creating a Space

“We made a space,” says Francine Soliunas, who took over the fledgling program in 2003.

For the next decade or so as director, Soliunas worked hard to connect to students.

“These were young people making definitive decisions about their lives. Young and unexposed. They were literally forced to confront some of their issues (from their backgrounds),” Soliunas says. “I said, ‘You are all students of color, you will always be in the minority. And quite frankly, you will be in the minority in your profession. You better start by learning how to, if nothing else, get along with one another.’”

Says PLUS graduate McNeiley, “Just being around other diverse students made me feel really comfortable, and at home.”

In a recent LSAC survey of roughly 200 PLUS students, more than 90 percent of the respondents—half of whom were African American and roughly 20 percent of whom were Latinx—said they were “comfortable being myself” in the program and “felt a sense of community” to a great or moderate extent.

The same survey determined that the students reported huge gains in knowledge about the law school environment, admission tests, career options, legal structures, and the legal profession in general.

Directors noticed, and encouraged, big bursts of self-confidence among students. But the other half of developing the program was, well, programming. Who would the students see, hear from, talk to, learn from—besides themselves? Professors, judges, and practitioners, many of them minorities and all of whom would enforce a singular idea: you could do this, if you work at it.

“One of my favorite memories was going to see (U.S. District Court) Judge Ann Claire Williams,” says McNeiley, referring to the first judge of color to sit on the U.S. Court of Appeals for

“It was a realization that we needed to go back further in the educational experience, because many of the candidates were disadvantaged from day one. The earlier the pipeline started, the better.”— Kent Lollis

the Seventh Circuit. “We were in her chambers, and she told us how important it was for diverse law students to keep going. To keep going.”

“Professional identity doesn’t start in law school, it starts before law school. You have to envision yourself in the profession,” says Liz Bodamer, LSAC’s diversity, equity, and inclusion policy and research analyst and senior program manager. She is also a 2008 Chicago-Kent PLUS program graduate, and remembers visiting Williams. “I had her sign my certificate,” she laughs.

“You cannot overestimate the power of planting the idea in people’s minds that this might be a career for you,” says Kari Johnson, a Chicago-Kent professor who has been teaching a research and writing course within the PLUS program since 2002. “You build their confidence, and it comes to encompass their career in the law.”

LSAC deemed Chicago-Kent’s program so successful that it offered a rare extension of its initial $100,000-a-year grant. Instead of three years, Chicago-Kent got enough money for six.

But the biggest challenge, Bodamer notes, is sustainability: What happens after those grants run out?

When Chicago-Kent’s money ran out, then-Chicago-Kent Dean Hal Krent offered $5,000 in seed money, and Soliunas canvassed Chicago law firms to try to match it.

“I talked about the poor showing in terms of numbers of students of color in law schools, period. I talked about the discipline in the program, the leadership skills. All of these things were attractive to the firms,” Soliunas says.

A couple of large firms put in a few thousand dollars, and others followed, enough to keep the program running.

Of the 35 or so schools that received PLUS grants from the LSAC, only five continued their programs once the grant funding ran out. Chicago-Kent is the oldest of them.

“It did accomplish what we wanted to accomplish: Minority enrollment went up when law school enrollment went down,” Lollis says.

An Unfaltering Look Forward

Ross-Jackson, who took over the program from Soliunas in 2012, wishes she’d had something like the PLUS program when she was thinking about law school. It would have saved her years of self-doubt.

After growing up on Chicago’s South Side, attending Chicago Public Schools, and attaining her undergraduate degree in biology from Hampton University, she worked in the Chicago Police Department’s crime lab. There, during the times she was called to testify in court, she met plenty of attorneys—and she realized many of them weren’t any smarter than she was.

“But I just didn’t feel like I was ready yet,” Ross-Jackson says. Rather than take the leap to law school, she got a master’s degree first. She looks back on that decision now and shakes her head.

“I was intimidated about applying; I continued to stumble into different things,” Ross-Jackson says. “When you don’t have people in your family and in your community in these roles, even if you see somebody else in that role, they didn’t come from your space. I didn’t view myself as being a lawyer, didn’t think I was prepared, but I was.

“And I don’t want to see other people do that.”

It turned out she was more than prepared: She graded onto the law review, graduated in the top 10 percent of her class, and landed a job at a large Chicago law firm.

Students repeatedly credit Ross-Jackson as a mentor: someone who tells them yes, they can. She sees herself as a coach, “a driver,” as much as a nurturer.

Johnson, the PLUS instructor, credits Ross-Jackson and Soliunas for keeping the program running so long. “It’s an administrative feat to pull off,” she says.

Over time, Ross-Jackson has added more overview courses to the PLUS curriculum. The courses are about the entire law school experience, giving students a better taste of what they’ll be in for. She asks for weekly reflections. And she follows up.

“It’s not just a ‘one and done.’ These students stay connected with their cohort, and hopefully with me,” she says.

Marsha Ross-Jackson

Ross-Jackson laments that enrollment numbers still haven’t moved enough for her liking; in the end, the legal profession is still 86 percent non-Hispanic white, according to the American Bar Association’s 2020 demographic report.

“The last year and a half, if it’s taught us nothing else, it has shown us that there are still so many inequities impacting communities of color that result from system barriers that were created by the law. Who better to understand the impact and advocate for change than people from these communities, who are still missing?” she asks.

For those who wish to help Chicago-Kent’s PLUS program continue, follow this link, and specify “PLUS program” as the designated recipient. 

Diversity By the Numbers

Michael Wilder ’06 wasn’t much of a numbers man in high school. He wanted to be an artist; then—after a few years in the working world—a lawyer. Neither profession requires one to be a whiz at math.

But Wilder branched into diversity, equity, and inclusion law—working for more than a decade assisting companies with affirmative action audits—by embracing the numbers: searching for standard deviations from the mean, red flags in hiring and firing, and talking to people about how to address them.

And recently, he forged a number he’s proud of: membership in an organization he founded, which has skyrocketed from two to more than 650 members globally in just two years. It’s the kind of growth that has deviated far above what once seemed plausible.

“We marvel at Michael’s boundless energy. I told him, ‘There’s 24 hours in a day for everybody, including you,’” says Paul Bateman, chief inclusion, equity, and diversity officer at Littler Mendelson’s Chicago office, where Wilder now works. “You ask, ‘What comes off the plate in order to make everything happen?’ And from what I could tell, nothing.”

Born and raised in Detroit, Wilder’s first passion was art. After high school he considered working for Disney for a time, but when he noticed the company was leaning toward computer-generated art, he decided to go to college.

He grew up watching courtroom dramas on TV—the glory of getting a jury verdict—and remembers telling his parents he either wanted to be a lawyer or an artist.

“I don’t know many starving lawyers, but I know quite a few starving artists,” his mother told him.

Wilder received a bachelor’s degree from Michigan State University in social relations, a degree that emphasizes writing skills. While there, he also clerked at a small labor law firm in East Lansing, Michigan.

As he was studying for the LSAT and looking at colleges, Wilder’s father approached him and told him that he was worried about losing his job. Lots of pink slips were being handed out at his father’s insurance sales firm. Wilder did some research, and offered some advice; in the end, his father kept his job.

That experience led him to seek out good labor and employment law programs—and Chicago-Kent College of Law stood out. Wilder received his certificate in labor and employment law from the law school in 2006.

After graduation, he took a job at Littler Mendelson, P.C., where he had worked as a summer associate during law school. After a few weeks, one of the partners reached out and asked him if he was any good at math.

“I love math,” Wilder replied.

He soon sated his thirst for numbers after being introduced to the extensive auditing processes used by the United States Department of Labor’s Office of Federal Contract Compliance Programs.

That’s also how Wilder branched into the diversity, equity, and inclusion realm, reviewing the affirmative action plans of federal contractors. For the next 10 years, Wilder flew around the country, casting a critical eye on the hiring, firing, and compensation practices of companies, to see if there were any red flags, mathematically speaking.

“I looked for a standard deviation of more than two in a racial, gender, or age category. Then you have to dig deeper to see what’s going on, if it was something that could be corrected,” Wilder says. “There were companies that had heard of me, that came to me proactively.”

Out of the hundreds of audits he reviewed, Wilder says he actually only saw one where a violation was blatantly intentional. A male manager had only been hiring women in a retail manufacturing job. Wilder contacted him and interviewed him in person.

“You literally rejected all the men,” Wilder told him.

“I like working with the ladies,” the man replied.

In other audits, Wilder says, “honestly, people weren’t thinking. If you’re hiring in rural America, you have to be proactive about hiring diverse people. I had one audit where the applicant pool had zero minorities. They weren’t actively recruiting from a nearby college. I told them, ‘You need to go to their job fairs.’ And they did. And their applicant pool became much more diverse.

“They were used to doing things a certain way, and they had a blind spot.”

Sometimes those blind spots were inside the house. Wilder notes that while OFCCP auditing work is a great opportunity, “when I was doing it, I was the only African-American male that I was aware of doing it. I went to conferences, and I was pretty much it. So, it’s an area that could certainly use more diversity.”

After years of audits, Wilder— now a senior shareholder at Littler Mendelson, P.C. and core member of the firm’s complex trial and litigation practice group —has also joined Littler’s diversity and inclusion services practice group, advising clients on how to create more diverse applicant pools.

To avoid getting sued under Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964—which prohibits employment discrimination based on race, color, religion, sex, and national origin—Wilder advises clients that such programs can’t exclude non-minorities, though they can still be marketed toward diverse candidates. Wilder also sat on the firm’s diversity and inclusion council for more than five years.

“Michael makes every committee and team he is a part of better. His optimism and can-do attitude elevates everyone else who is involved,” says Erin Webber, president and managing director of Littler Mendelson, P.C.

In 2017 Wilder was named one of the Most Influential Minority Lawyers in Chicago by Crain’s Chicago Business.

But more importantly, that same year Wilder co-founded his organization. He started the Black Men Lawyers’ Association to provide resources and peer support to Black male lawyers, judges, law professors, law students, paralegals, and law clerks.

“I realized there were no other such associations in the country, and there are already Black women law associations,” Wilder says. “After getting into law school, I just didn’t see many Black men [students].”

“We need to talk about breaking into corporate spaces and law firm spaces that don’t look like us. And once you are in there, being successful and not feeling isolated,” Wilder adds. “There are mental health issues, and we’re not talking about it. A lot of us don’t come from money. Once we do get money, now we’re supporting families, extended families. How do I manage money when I don’t come from money?”

The offer of peer support was taken up, in big numbers. With the backing of major firms like Baker McKenzie, Kirkland & Ellis, Littler Mendelson, P.C., and Quarels & Brady, BMLA now holds an annual conference whose recent summit had a 125 attendee cap. It hosted 150.

“For these kinds of nascent organizations, often they last one or two years, because they don’t have individuals who are committed to getting them past the sophomore year,” says Bateman. “He’s been able to help keep it going, increase what the organization does, put on events that are easy for our law firm to get behind.”

“I call him Batman,” says the organization’s co-founder, Sunga Mkwezalamba, who is a corporate counsel at Amazon. “He sends out emails late at night, at 2 a.m., and he’d respond within 10 minutes. He’s extremely responsible. I just don’t think he sleeps.” 

“I looked for a standard deviation of more than two in a racial, gender, or age category. Then you have to dig deeper to see what’s going on, if it was something that could be corrected.”— Michael Wilder

The “Generalist” at DEI’s Forefront

TO THIS DAY, Nicholas Cummings ’08 speaks against what he sees as an anti-generalist prejudice in the legal industry.

“There’s a belief that certain skills are not transferable. But the same rules of evidence apply regardless of the area of law you practice. We all go by the same rules, depending on the level of court you’re in,” Cummings says.

Out of law school, Cummings felt the prejudice of the specialized: recruiters wanted years of practice and education in particular areas before they would glance at a resume. But after plenty of trial work, addressing numerous areas of law, Cummings soon found himself advising for a highly specialized area: diversity, equity, and inclusion law.

And not just advising. Just last year Cummings was thrust into the national spotlight, responsible for vetting and defending a municipal reparations program that was the first of its kind in the country.

“Every city attorney is not up for this challenge, the potential and likely legal challenge. Nick could have easily said there’s no precedent, it hasn’t happened before,” says former Evanston Alderman Robin Rue Simmons, who worked with Cummings on the program.

“But he didn’t.”

Born and raised in Columbus, Ohio, Cummings grew up “a big Law and Order fan.” He was the first in his family to go to college, receiving a bachelor’s degree in computer science from DePaul University—a degree he chose solely to secure a good-paying job when he graduated.

But the economics of that decision offered little in the way of satisfaction.

“Just because I was good at it, there was no specific passion,” he says. And soon the economics faltered: the dot-com bubble burst just after Cummings graduated, and he was laid off from his job, just months into his career.

There was a silver lining: now he had an economic argument to go to law school as well. He’d taken a political science course during his undergraduate years.

“It dealt a lot with constitutional law, and I was hooked,” Cummings says.

He received his J.D. certificate in intellectual property law “to try to give me some flexibility.” During school he continued to work full-time in information technology, first for a car dealership and then for an insurance company.

But as soon as he graduated, the United States housing bubble burst.

“Any time I go to school, there’s immediately a recession,” Cummings jokes.

He continued to work in information technology until 2010, when he took a job with the Cook County State’s Attorney’s office as an assistant state’s attorney. Cummings started his career in child support cases, then criminal misdemeanors; he later worked for the

real estate and transactions unit of the Civil Actions Bureau where he focused on contracts and real estate closings for the Bureau of Economic Development, working on United States Housing and Urban Development programs.

“It was almost a training ground to start your own practice,” Cummings says. “You have some lawyers that take a lot of pride in being a trial lawyer. But I want to be good at all of those [other] things; I just want to be a good lawyer. I want to be that guy you can trust to do it all.”

Still, Cummings did his share of trial work.

From his time as an assistant state’s attorney, through his time working for the Chicago Transit Authority as a chief attorney in tort litigation, Cummings got his share of trial time, in many cases before juries. He also assisted in federal civil rights cases, picking juries multiple times in federal court.

He eventually applied to corporate firms who, he felt, looked down on his broad range.

But there was one area where being a generalist was a boon. In 2020 Cummings was hired as the deputy city attorney for the City of Evanston, Illinois, where his range of work was seen as an asset.

“I like the government work and specifically what I do, because I’m much more of a generalist than I ever have been in my career,” Cummings says.

But that same year, Cummings was pulled into working on an ordinance that made national headlines as the the first of its kind to delve into a particular realm of equity work: reparations.

Former Evanston Alderman Simmons remembers when Cummings was hired as a deputy city attorney.

“His first words to me were his excitement to be able to work on reparations,” Simmons says. “I was equally thrilled to see him, as a Black man, feeling quite confident that he would bring some lived experience to the work of racial justice.”

Cummings arrived just as a subcommittee of three aldermen—those representing the majority-minority wards in the city—started to research a historic issue that they believed still had ramifications today. They’d looked at how Evanston’s land clearance commission had, largely in the 1930s and 1940s, displaced a group of mostly Black residents from their homes, moving them from one part of the city to another, ostensibly to tackle urban blight. Other policies made purchasing property more difficult in that particular area, and fledgling attempts at homeownership and wealth generation by the Black community were halted in their tracks.

“We wanted to move beyond apology and ceremony,” says Simmons, who represented one of the affected wards and still sits on the reparations committee.

How could they address it? And, the aldermen asked Cummings, how could they craft a law that would survive legal challenges?

“People misunderstand the point of reparations,” Cummings says. “Reparations for slavery is a common idea. I will not debate that, I think there should be. But local governments and state governments don’t have the authority to do that.

“[Cities] have to limit [their ordinances] to what local actions have happened. They cannot provide restitu-

tion based on private action—the only people with authority to remedy private action is the federal government.”

“We could say with good faith that the city was no longer deliberately indifferent to discrimination going on the city, in the area of housing,” Cummings adds, noting that in 1968 the city passed a fair housing ordinance, making it illegal to discriminate based on race in the area of housing. Though it initially had no teeth in terms of an enforcement mechanism, a year later it did, and was actively levied against banks and realtors operating in Evanston.

But, like most diversity, equity, and inclusion efforts, the aldermen sought to address historic ramifications: the loss of wealth and stability to the city’s Black community in the decades since.

“Always on the forefront of my mind was that the program had to pass constitutional muster,” Cummings says. “Any time you focus your efforts on a suspect class (based on gender, race, or religion), then you have to survive strict scrutiny. It has to have ‘compelling governmental interest,’ and has to be narrowly tailored to address that interest.”

The “compelling interest” part is an “easy hurdle,” Cummings believes, confident in the legal argument that the past actions of the city were harmful, and should be addressed. The trick was narrowly tailoring the ordinance to ensure that it addressed those specific actions.

The ordinance eventually allotted $400,000 from the city’s 2020 cannabis tax for claims of up to $25,000, to go toward a down payment on a home, repairing a current home, or paying down the principal on a current mortgage.

But who had standing to claim they were harmed? In the end, Cummings urged the aldermen to limit the ordinance to Black residents who had lived in the city of Evanston from 1919— the first year that the city started working on a comprehensive plan that prompted the actions of the clearance commision— to 1969, when its fair housing ordinance became effective. It also applied to the residents’ direct descendents. Within a year, the city awarded claims to 16 people, tapping out the fund. It was officially the first publicly funded municipal reparation program in the country.

Though there have been numerous information requests—from as far away as Utah—relating to the task force’s correspondence, to date there have been no legal claims filed to challenge the ordinance. “Once people realized it had nothing to do with slavery, it calmed down,” Cummings says. “Nick is very matter-of-fact. He is all about the business and the outcomes, with a hilarious, dry sense of humor,” Simmons says. “The dry humor is something I appreciate, because the work is so heavy.”

Renewing the fund remains another matter: Cummings is hesitant to directly tap the city’s general fund, out of a concern that might open the ordinance up to legal challenges.

In the meantime, Cummings— now promoted to Evanston’s top city attorney—has used his position to promote equity in the city in other ways. His office is more diverse than most: at one point, the law department of seven included six non-white members and five women. “When I hire outside counsel, I look into their diversity efforts—how diverse is their firm?” Cummings says. “How diverse is their leadership? Do they have women as partners? LGBTQ partners? Someone who’s not white as a partner?”

He’s also advocating, with the support of the city’s council, manager, and human resources department, for implicit bias training for staff. Even though he’s not a DEI specialist, Cummings says, his work as a “generalist” hasn’t been bad in that area at all. 

“You have some lawyers that take a lot of pride in being a trial lawyer. But I want to be good at all of those [other] things; I just want to be a good lawyer. I want to be that guy you can trust to do it all.”

— Nicolas Cummings