California panel OKs reparations limit for slave descendants

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March 30, 2022

By Associated Press, TheGrio

“The vote Tuesday split 5-4, and the hours-long debate was at times testy and emotional

Yolanda Renee King, granddaughter of The Rev. Martin Luther King Jr., raises her fist as she speaks during the March on Washington, on the 57th anniversary of the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr.’s “I Have a Dream” speech on Aug. 28, 2020. (Jonathan Ernst/Pool Photo via AP, File)

California’s first-in-the-nation task force on reparations has decided to limit state compensation to the descendants of free and enslaved Black people who were in the U.S. in the 19th century, narrowly rejecting a proposal to include all Black people regardless of lineage.

The vote Tuesday split 5-4, and the hours-long debate was at times testy and emotional. Near the end, the Rev. Amos Brown, president of the San Francisco branch of the NAACP and vice chair of the task force, pleaded with the commission to move ahead with a clear definition of who would be eligible for restitution.

Reparations efforts at the federal level have not gone anywhere, but cities and universities are taking up the issue. The mayor of Providence, Rhode Island, announced a city commission in February while the city of Boston is considering a proposal to form its own reparations commission.

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Learn about some of the horrors that these reparations are for here.

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