Over 50 years after a Black neighborhood was razed to make room for a highway and industrial center, Cincinnati’s mayor and two city council members will apologize to the African American community, Cincinnati.com reports.

The long-awaited apology is expected to come at a press conference Tuesday (June 20). Leaders of the city believe that it will mark the first step toward "reconciliation" with former residents of the lower West End, which was known as the Kenyon-Barr district where 10,000 Black families called home.

In a joint announcement, Mayor Aftab Pureval, Vice Mayor Jan-Michele Lemon Kearney and Councilman Scotty Johnson said that the move to tear down the Kenyon-Barr neighborhood to expand Interstate 75 and a new business district in the Queensgate neighborhood was "rooted in institutional racism."

“If we're going to succeed, we have to call out the mistakes of the past and seek true reconciliation to move forward,” Pureval said at a press conference. “We apologize to the West End's families and communities, and the West End itself."

"When we talk about all the transformational infrastructure projects, it is particularly important to remember the public policies that played a role in harming our black communities."

The announcement also detailed how the city has "sincere regret" over the displacement and “will initiate reconciliation to former residents of the city’s lower West End, their descendants, and to all Cincinnatians for the elimination of the lower West End community.”

“We're going to continue this work, and we're making sure we're kicking open every door necessary to try and get to a point where there is a level of reconciliation,” Johnson said.

Kearney has a personal connection with the devastating impact that gentrification has had on the lower West End neighborhood. Her father, a physician, was forced to relocate his practice to nearby Avondale after the neighborhood was demolished.

"Family wealth and family legacies were just gone," Kearney said. "I think the apology is important. This city is already committed to racial equity. This is part of that."

In the 1950s, the city of Cincinnati completely leveled the Kenyon-Barr neighborhood to create a business center and build out Interstate 75 which was described as an “urban renewal project.” As a result of the legislation, almost 26,000 residents relocated to other parts of the city. Black residents accounted for 97 percent of the migrants, making it “the largest forced urban migration of Black people by percentage in U.S. history.”

Wendy Ellis, a George Washington University professor and Cincinnati native, noted that the city failed to keep its promise that Black residents would receive affordable housing when they relocated. She also said that approximately 27 percent of the new homes that residents occupied did not have working toilets.

“When you’re talking about that kind of pain that has been inflicted and the broken promise, you have broken a promise across at least three generations of Cincinnatians here,” Ellis said. “We have to take ownership of that.”

Pureval believes that the only way for the city to move forward is to face the truth of its racist past.

“The city has acknowledged the tragedy, but I am not sure it has taken responsibility and apologized," he added. "The importance is not just learning about our history, but learning from it so it doesn’t happen again."