California has formally apologized for its role in perpetuating slavery in the state with the signing of a bill Thursday by Gov. Gavin Newsom, even as a larger push for reparations faces challenges.
The governor was joined by members of the California Legislative Black Caucus for a signing ceremony at the Capitol Thursday. AB 3089, authored by Assemblymember Reggie Jones-Sawyer (D-Los Angeles), acknowledges the state’s complicity in the human chattel slavery of the nation’s past and its legacy of ongoing harm on generations of Black Californians.
The bill passed with unanimous bipartisan support in the legislature. California joins a handful of other states that have issued formal apologies for slavery.
State of California/Governor Gavin Newsom
“The State of California accepts responsibility for the role we played in promoting, facilitating, and permitting the institution of slavery, as well as its enduring legacy of persistent racial disparities,” said Newsom in a prepared statement. “Building on decades of work, California is now taking another important step forward in recognizing the grave injustices of the past – and making amends for the harms caused.”
The new law also requires the state to install a plaque memorializing the apology in a public and conspicuous location in the State Capitol.
“This is a monumental achievement born from a two-year academic study of the losses suffered by Black Americans in California due to systemic bigotry and racism,” said Jones-Sawyer in a press release. “Healing can only begin with an apology. The State of California acknowledges its past actions and is taking this bold step to correct them, recognizing its role in hindering the pursuit of life, liberty, and happiness for Black individuals through racially motivated punitive laws,” said Jones-Sawyer.
California became a state in 1850, declaring itself a free state which outlawed slavery. But in practice, it allowed slaves to be brought into the state and continued to enforce fugitive slave laws, with the state Supreme Court declaring the anti-slavery law was simply a “declaration of a principle.” The state also opposed civil rights laws, enacted racial barriers such as poll taxes and literacy tests, prohibited interracial marriage, and openly sanctioned widespread segregation and discrimination against Black Californians.
The bill signing came a day after Newsom vetoed a Senate bill to help Black families reclaim or be compensated for property seized by the state through eminent domain. SB 1050 did not have an enforcement mechanism because another bill to create a reparations agency to review the claims did not pass. Newsom said in his veto message that SB 1050 “tasks a nonexistent state agency to carry out its various provisions and requirements, making it impossible to implement.”
Reparations advocates have been at odds with members of the state’s Black Caucus during the process of passing bills that would implement recommendations from California’s Reparations Task Force. Lawmakers are grappling over the advance of reparations policies that could include cash payments and other compensation without incurring a blowback from voters and a ballooning budget. A 2022 national poll showed 61% of those surveyed oppose the government issuing monetary reparations to descendants of enslaved people.
According to economists from the task force, descendants in California have lost over $500 billion in wealth due to factors like over-incarceration, shortened lifespans, and the devaluation of Black-owned businesses.
Thursday’s bill-signing ceremony included other bills prioritized by the California Legislative Black Caucus that address systemic racism. Among them is one requiring the state to review books in banned prisons, another protecting the right to wear “natural and protective” hairstyles in competitive sports, a bill that addresses food and medical “deserts” in communities of color, and a bill to enforce an existing law requiring perinatal health care workers to complete anti-bias training.
