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Years of effort went into making California the first state in the nation to get reparations laws to the governor’s desk to be signed into law. But now, in the final hours, two historic bills aimed at repairing harm for Black Californians — those that are specifically written for the African American descendants of people enslaved in the United States – are stalling in the Assembly.
In January the Legislature’s Black Caucus introduced a slate of 14 reparations bills , but Sen. Steven Bradford, a member of the caucus and a state reparations task force, also introduced his own more ambitious bills.
Bradford’s Senate Bills 1403 and 1331 would create a new agency and also a fund to help implement those policies recommended last year by a first-in-the-nation state task force, including eventual direct cash payments to the African American descendants of people enslaved in the United States. The envisioned California American Freedmen Affairs Agency would help Black Californians research their genealogy, confirm their eligibility for reparations payments, and expedite their claims.