State legislative leaders are expected to name the nine people who will study reparations for descendants of enslaved people and consequences of New York’s impacts on the slave trade before Black History Month ends, lawmakers said Monday.
Gov. Kathy Hochul, Senate Majority Leader Andrea Stewart-Couisins and Assembly Speaker Carl Heastie will each appoint three members to the state Community Commission on Reparations Remedies — a task force created under a new law the governor signed in December to study potential slavery reparation.
The commission was the topic of a workshop held Saturday in Albany as part of the 53rd annual Black, Puerto Rican, Hispanic and Asian Legislative Caucus weekend, and tense conversations about who should be eligible for reparations in New York show the work won’t be easy.
“Black communities are at a disadvantage,” said Assemblywoman Michaelle Solages, who also chairs the BPHA caucus. “We are a victim of systematic racism and we need to break those systems down and then give us restorative justice or whatever that looks like. We demand that now.”
Several lawmakers had hoped legislative leaders would be ready to announce the commissioners during caucus weekend, but said they expect appointments to be announced before the end of the month, or within the next 10 days.
The commission must start its 18-month work by the end of June to study the cost of reparations in the state and how to close the income inequality gap for Black people stemming from slavery. Slavery remained legal in New York until 1827, but the state insured slave owners in other states for generations.
“You cannot move forward on reparations until you address and open up exactly what happened,” Brooklyn NAACP President L. Joy Williams said at Saturday’s forum.
The final report to be delivered to the Legislature will be the basis of future legislation to address racial issues. But determining what reparations should look like in the state, and which New Yorkers should be eligible, won’t be easy.
Tensions flared Saturday between attendees and lawmakers alike. Several Black New Yorkers who are descendants of slaves brought to the U.S. in the late 18th Century argue the benefit is for them — not all Blacks who arrived after slavery was abolished.
“There is a difference between chains and choice,” said Prime Freedman, adding his ancestors were emancipated under the 13th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution that abolished slavery.
“If you are an immigrant, you came here by choice,” he said. “Our ancestors were not immigrants. Our ancestors were enslaved and we did not have a choice.”
Brooklyn Assemblywoman Stefani Zinerman disagreed, arguing reparations must be explored for all Black people, and the study will focus on three areas of history: Impacts of original enslavement, segregation and Jim Crow and ongoing racism.
“Until we eradicate racism, the meter is still running,” Zinerman said. “So America still wants to have to pay more and more and more money. So what we cannot do at this point when we are owed so much and the meter is still ticking, is to decide which Black people get reparations. Our job is to make sure that the repair that is required because we wear our skin every single day, that we have to deal with it.”
Before the floor was opened to the public for questions and comments, Freedman and others in the audience spoke out of turn, at times over lawmakers. City and state officials leading the forum briefly disagreed about threatening the use of law enforcement to control attendees.
Despite disagreement, they found common ground on the need to determine New York’s role in the American slave trade. The commission will estimate the cost of its impact on the slave trade, and practices like redlining and mass incarceration that have perpetuated economic disparities within Black communities.
“I need these towns to open the books and see specifically how they prohibited mortgages of Black people,” Williams said. “I need to see how corporations colluded with insurance companies.”
New York’s commission — the third of its kind in the nation after the state of California and city of Boston — could influence future action at the federal level. California’s task force that studied reparations determined the cost would be about $500 billion.
New York’s commission will determine different ways reparations could be made in Black communities, but does not rule out financial compensation.
Williams said it’s vital for the public to remain engaged throughout the commission’s work, whether they agreed with the need to study the issue or not.
“To say that we don’t need to study the issue, I think is a disservice because we have not even collectively within our own communities talked about the comprehensive nature by which enslavement has impacted us as a people — we have not,” Williams said. “We need to shine the light on exactly what happened because that is part of reparations.”
