It’s been a year of modest victories and tough losses for California’s reparations movement. What comes next?

By Robin Buller, The Guardian

Kamilah Moore, chair of the state’s historic taskforce, on winning a formal apology, and losing a fund and an agency

California is often celebrated as a leader in the growing movement for reparations for Black Americans. In 2020, it announced its first-in-the-nation reparations taskforce, which was charged with studying the issue and making recommendations for redress. Since then, it’s inspired similar initiatives across the US. But actually implementing those reparations proposals hasn’t been as easy.

Over the past year, members of California’s Legislative Black Caucus put forward a package of bills that drew on the taskforce’s policy recommendations released last June. They included initiatives to increase access to education for Black Californians, prohibit race-based discrimination in schools and workplaces, and offer restitution for mid-century racist eminent domain programs in which the homes and businesses of Black residents were seized by the state.

After final votes were taken in August, fewer than half the bills passed.

Kamilah Moore, a reparatory justice scholar and attorney who chaired the state’s reparations taskforce, spoke to the Guardian about what these mixed results mean, where the movement goes from here, and how the elections could shape the future fight for reparations. The conversation has been edited for clarity and length.

Read the full interview here.

Check out our exhibit on Reconstruction, the unfinished attempt at social and economic equality of millions of newly freed African Americans after the American Civil War.

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