Policy Resolution LJE-25-06

WHEREAS, in 2021, AB 3121, authored by by California Assemblymember Shirley Weber was signed into law to establish the Task Force to Study and Develop Reparation Proposals for African Americans, with a special consideration for African Americans who are descendants of persons enslaved in the United States;

WHEREAS, the Task Force is required to identify, compile, and synthesize the relevant corpus of evidentiary documentation of the institution of slavery that existed within the United States, the colonies and specifically the State of California and recommend the forms of compensation that should be awarded, the instrumentalities through which they should be awarded, and who should be eligible for this compensation and report this information to the California Legislature;

WHEREAS, on June 23, 2023, the Task Force issued its Final Report to the California Legislature, detailing in its 1,105 pages the ongoing and compounding harms experienced by African Americans as a result of slavery and its lingering effects on American society;

WHEREAS, this Final Report proposed various reparations proposals and one of the first recommendations was for the California Legislature to create an agency dedicated to the implementation and success of all of the recommendations of the report;

WHEREAS, this agency would include various offices within it to assist with implementation and oversight of any enacted reparations recommendations, including a genealogy office to identify the eligibility for reparations;

WHEREAS, the United States engaged in the enslavement of African Americans for 246 years from 1619 to 1865;

WHEREAS, even after the abolition of slavery by President Abraham Lincoln through the Emancipation Proclamation in 1865, the United States government failed to grant African Americans the full rights of citizenship and failed to protect them from widespread violence, terror, and injustices;

WHEREAS, the violence and terror involved the killing and torture of African Americans;

WHEREAS, these injustices included but were not limited to enslavement, legal public and private segregation, racially motivated use of eminent domain, red-lining, and discrimination in federal, state and local funding and programming targeting African Americans;

WHEREAS, a debt is owed to all enslaved African Americans and their descendants by the United States government and that reparations are needed to remedy it;

WHEREAS, if an individual can inherit generational wealth, an individual can inherit generational debt; and

WHEREAS, reparations are neither hand-outs nor charity, they are a debt long owed and overdue and can be opportunity to ensure equity in the United States.

THEREFORE, BE IT RESOLVED, that the National Black Caucus of State Legislators (NBCSL) recognizes the need for reparations and the need for establishment of an agency to lay the foundation for reparations, urging California to create an agency that could serve as model for other states and the United States; and

BE IT FINALLY RESOLVED, that the NBCSL calls on Congress, state, and local governments to enact legislation to create tasks forces like California’s providing a blueprint to understand the full scope of needs and potential solutions to ensure that all African Americans and descendants of slavery living in the United States are given what they are owed and promised.

• Resolution ID: LJE-25-06
• Sponsored by: Sen. Steven Bradford (CA)
• Policy Committee: Law, Justice, and Ethics (LJE)