By Antonio Ray Harvey California Black Media

The California Task Force to Study and Develop Reparation Proposals for African Americans is recommending that the State Legislature fund a governmental department dedicated to assisting reparations applicants prove their ancestry to enslaved people in the United States.

The task force’s proposal to establish a “genealogy branch” within the proposed California American Freedmen Affairs Agency (CAFAA) will be included in the task force’s final report, which is scheduled to be submitted to the Legislature by the end of June 2023. The branch would provide access to expert genealogical research to confirm reparations eligibility for an estimated 2.5 million Black Americans in California who are likely to seek restitution.

“The legislation that created the California Reparations Task Force requires the body to recommend reparations proposals that provide special consideration for descendants of slaves,” task force chairperson Kamilah V. Moore told California Black Media on April 10. “Thus, eligibility for Californians should they qualify for reparations through the proposed California American Freedmen Affairs Agency is of utmost importance. The agency will be positioned to provide perpetual special consideration to this unique and special group, through direct reparatory justice services and oversight of existing agencies.”

The task force will recommend that the CAFAA be headquartered in Sacramento and have satellite offices all around the state. California is in line to become the first state in the United States to provide Black Americans reparations, or restitution for slavery and other state-sanctioned discrimination or exclusion.

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As the determining factor for compensation, the task force narrowly decided in March 2022 that lineage, not race, will determine who will be eligible for reparations to align with Proposition 209, state law prohibiting the consideration of race in public policy decisions or determinations.

During that March 2022 meeting, the task force listened to the perspectives of 11 genealogy experts who offered insights on qualification for reparations before voting 5-4 in favor of eligibility.

One of the experts, Dr. Evelyn McDowell, an Associate Professor and Accounting Department Chair at Rider

University in New Jersey, is a member and president of the Sons and Daughters of the United States Middle Passage (SDUSMP), a society that works to preserve the memory and history of slavery.

The 10-year-old organization, McDowell said, has successfully helped its members trace their lineage through a mix of research and analysis of the U.S Census, birth and death certificates, and state laws that tracked the enslaved.

“My purpose here is to tell the [task force] that it is absolutely possible to trace one’s lineage to individuals who were enslaved in the United States,” McDowell said. “For the vast majority of African Americans, it is relatively easy.”

Dr. Hollis Gentry, a genealogy specialist at the Smithsonian’s National Museum of African American History and Culture Library, shared personal experiences of tracing her ancestry to slavery. She used the Freedmen’s Bureau Records, national archives, and records from Daughters of the American Revolution (DAR).

Gentry suggested that an agency should be established to manage the eligibility process. It should be connected to state archives and offices of vital records to facilitate access to records that would assist reparations applicants.

Other genealogists who testified pointed to the lack of access to historical records and the difficulties created when enslaved families were separated after members were sold, traded, and auctioned.

Kellie Farrish, a genealogist with over 15 years of experience in Deoxyribonucleic acid (DNA) analysis and lineage tracing using DNA, provided instructions for how one might want to do genealogy research to locate “enslaved ancestors using the completely free Familysearch.com website.”

Farrish, the lead genealogist for the non-profit Reparation Generation, noted three criteria for determining potential reparations applicants’ lineage: ancestors born in the Deep South states prior to 1865, ancestors living in the U.S. prior to the 1900s, and ancestors living in the Deep South states prior to the Great Migration of the 1940s.

“First, we must define what it means to be African American. For the sake of this discussion, African Americans are those involuntarily brough to the United States for the purpose of being enslaved,” Farrish told the task force. “Using genealogy to prove descendancy from this group would involve tracing one’s lineage back to either a person enslaved in this system or a time when there was little to no presence of legal voluntary immigration from African or Caribbean countries.”

In August 2022, Gov. Gavin Newsom signed Senate Bill (SB) 189, legislation that would facilitate processing lineage-based reparations claims using state data. SB 189 authorizes the State Controller’s Office and the Department of Human Resources to disaggregate Black employee demographic data in an effort to identify who has immigrant origins and who descends from enslaved people in the United States.

SB 189 was authored by the Coalition for a Just and Equitable California (CJEC) and Assemblymember Chris Holden (D-Pasadena). CJEC is a statewide coalition of organizations, associations and community members united for Reparations for Black U.S Slavery Descendants.

SB 189 “feels like a generational step forward for our people, for the state, and for the country,” Coalition for a Just and Equitable California (CJEC) lead organizer Chris Lodgson said after Newsom signed the bill. “We are a specific group of people, and we need and deserve to be recognized as such, for reparations and for everything else we are owed.

The task force will hold its next meeting May 6 in Oakland at Lisser Hall, which is located at 500 MacArthur Boulevard, Mills College at Northeastern University. It will begin at 9 a.m. PT.

By Tanu Henry and Antonio Ray Harvey
California Black Media

Your roundup of news stories you might have missed last week.

Assemblymember Mike Gipson Demands Sac County Remove Foster Children From Former Jail

Last week, Assemblymember Mike Gipson (D-Carson) demanded Sacramento County officials stop housing foster children in a former juvenile correction center.

The lawmaker, who authored Assembly Bill (AB) 175 that expanded and clarified the Foster Youth Bill of Rights, says what Sacramento County is doing is “unacceptable” and is in violation of state law.

“This is heartbreaking. It’s heartbreaking,” said Gipson, who explained that sex traffickers have access to the facility.

“We can find shelters for dogs, and people take those animals and roll out the red carpet,” Gipson told KCRA TV in Sacramento. “Are you telling me we can’t find placement for children in this county?”

Sacramento County officials say the decision to place 15 “high needs” foster children aged 13 to 17 years old at the Warren E. Thornton Juvenile facility is a temporary measure while the county seeks a legal and permanent solution.

Gipson Also Pushes Two Tax Bills

Last week, at a rally at the State Capitol, Gipson also discussed AB 1498, legislation he authored that would establish an Earned Income Tax Credit (EITC) minimum of $300. According to the California Budget and Policy Center, 78% of people who qualify for EITC are people of color.

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Gipson also expressed his support for another EITC-related legislation, AB 1128, at the rally. AB 1128 would “remove the requirement that a qualifying child has to be younger than 6 years of age as of the last day of the taxable year.”

California Elected Officials Among Black Leaders Mourning Harry Belafonte

Black actors, musicians, businesspeople, politicians and more wrote heartfelt tributes and messages of condolences last week after news broke that Harry Belafonte had passed.

Belafonte, singer, actor, activist, philanthropist, civil rights leader and first Black person to win an Emmy Award, died of congestive heart failure April 25 at his home in New York City.

Rep. Maxine Waters (D-CA-43) paid tribute to her friend on Twitter.

“Another superstar has just passed. My dear friend, Harry Belafonte, was an extraordinarily talented singer and performer,” she tweeted. “More than that, he was a civil rights activist who marched with Dr. Martin Luther King and worked with President Nelson Mandela to end Apartheid in South Africa. We will all miss his wisdom, his advice, and his huge giving spirit.”

Rep. Barbara Lee (D-CA-12) also honored Belafonte’s life and work in a tweet.

“Sad to hear of the passing of my friend Harry Belafonte,” Lee wrote. “The world has lost not only a great musician and actor, but a civil rights activist and warrior for justice whose voice helped change America for the better. Thank you for your work, your courage, and your service.”

Democrats Shoot Down GOP-Backed Fentanyl Bills

Democrats on the Assembly Public Safety Committee last week voted down several bills aimed at addressing California’s Fentanyl crisis.

The measures would have strengthened penalties for Fentanyl dealers who possess large quantities of the drug — or kill or injure people they sell the drug to.

“Californians will continue to die, victims of drug dealers profiting off poisoning our communities,” Assembly Republican leader James Gallagher said in a statement. “These bills were not criminalizing addiction, returning to the ‘war on drugs,’ or any other lie told by the pro-fentanyl lobbyists. They were reasonable, bipartisan proposals to save lives.”

Assemblymembers Reggie Jones-Sawyer (D-Los Angeles), who chairs the Public Safety Committee and Mia Bonta (D-Alameda) pointed to “harm reduction programs,” which experts say are more effective tools to fight the Fentanyl crisis than the punitive measures being proposed by lawmakers.

Jones-Sawyer says more arrests do not solve the problem in the long-term.

“As soon as you arrest somebody, unfortunately they may get replaced by somebody else and then there are even more drugs on the street,” he said. “Unfortunately, it’s a lucrative business. We’ve got to get to what the Governor is doing, for example, getting to the supply side. Which is stopping the drugs from getting across the border.”

Bonta pointed to the major criminal justice reform efforts the state is undertaking, as well as a $61 billion investment in harm reduction programs, including distribution of test strips and drug overdose medication.

Biden Highlights Importance of the Black Press at White House Correspondents’ Dinner

At the 2023 White House Correspondents’ Dinner, President Joe Biden spoke about the importance of the Black press and the tragic death of Emmett Till, an event that helped galvanize the civil rights movement in the 1950s.

Biden told the room full of journalists that during Black History Month this year he hosted the screening of the film “Till.”

On Aug. 28, 1955, while visiting family in Money, Mississippi, Emmett Till, a 14-year-old African American teen from Chicago, was lynched for allegedly flirting with a white woman a few days earlier.

The story of Till and his mother Mamie Till-Mobly is a “story of a family’s promise and loss” and the country’s “reckoning with hate, violence, and the abuse of power,” Biden said.

“It’s a story that was seared into our memory and our conscience — the nation’s conscience — when Mrs. Till insisted that an open casket for her murdered and maimed 14-year-old son be the means by which he was transported,” Biden said.  “She said, ‘Let the people see what I’ve seen.’”

Biden also commended Black publications for their reporting on the lynching and its aftermath, Till’s funeral, and the ensuing trial that freed the perpetrators.

“The reason the world saw what she saw was because of another hero in this story: the Black press,” Biden said “That’s a fact.  JET Magazine, the Chicago Defender, and other Black radio and newspapers were unflinching and brave in making sure America saw what she saw. “And I mean it.”

Two Black Women Among New Appointees to Emerge California Board

Two Black women are among four new appointees to the board of Emerge California, an Oakland-based body that describes itself as “the state’s premier organization that recruits and trains Democratic women to run for office.”

Brittni Chicuata and Alana D. Matthews are the two new Black women members of the 9-member board. The organization had a 70%-win rate out of the 125 candidates it supported in last November’s general election.

“I’m excited to welcome these powerful and accomplished women leaders to the Board of Directors to help lead Emerge California forward and build on our success in 2023 and beyond,” said Board Chair Rhodesia Ransom. “Since our founding more than twenty years ago, Emerge California has trained over 850 Democratic women to run for office, and we’re just getting started. These four women have valuable expertise and skills that will help us grow our movement to even greater heights.”

The other two new board members are Stacey Owens and Marina A. Torres.

Chicuata is Director of Economic Rights at the San Francisco Human Rights Commission.

Matthews, an Emerge alumna, is an Assistant District Attorney and Policy Director for the Contra Costa District Attorney’s Office. She is also an Adjunct Professor at McGeorge School of Law where she founded the Racial Equity and Justice Summer Practicum program.

By Antonio Ray Harvey and Manny Otiko, California Black Media

Note: This article has been updated and republished for clarity. A view about the inability of the City of San Francisco to afford paying reparations payments to its Black residents who qualify was expressed by several San Francisco Board of Supervisors members. That perspective was accurately captured in the story. However, that point of view was attributed to one member, Dean E. Preston, in a direct quote that did not reflect his words verbatim.

The San Francisco Branch of the NAACP is engaged in a public information blitz to clarify a press release it sent out urging the San Francisco city government to reject a proposal to pay each qualifying Black city resident a one-time lump sum reparation payment of $5 million.

The Rev. Amos Brown, a member of the San Francisco reparations board, pastor of Third Baptist Church, and the president of the San Francisco NAACP, released a March 14 statement before the recommendations were presented to the supervisors rejecting the $5 million payout.

Reparations should focus on investments and opportunities in five areas: education, employment, housing, healthcare, and a culture center for San Francisco’s Black residents, the prepared statement reads.

“We strongly believe that creating and funding programs that can improve the lives of those who have been impacted by racism and discrimination is the best path forward toward equality and justice,” Brown stated. Brown is the vice-chairperson of the California Reparation Task Force, which is proposing recommendations for two million Black residents in California.

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Eric McDowell, right, the chairperson for San Francisco’s African American Reparations Advisory Committee (AARAC), said the committee presented 111 recommendations of reparations to the city’s Board of Supervisors. CBM photo by Antonio Ray Harvey. December 2022.

The NAACP’s press release was met with immediate backlash by supporters in the movement for reparations across the country who have, for decades now, invested time, energy and money into bringing the issue to national attention.

In 2020, California became the first state to set up a task force to investigate the state’s involvement in slavery, state-sanctioned atrocities against African Americans and all other forms of discrimination and discriminatory policy that excluded Black Californians from state benefits or protections or that prevented them from gaining social or economic power.

“This is reprehensible. It is a betrayal to Black Americans,” tweeted Bishop Talbert Swan on March 17 reacting to the press release.

“As a life member of the NAACP and the longest-serving president in the history of my branch, I am ashamed by the position taken by the San Francisco branch.”

Brown has since clarified in several public appearances that he is not against the idea of a cash payout but only wants the recommendation to be a reasonable compromise — one, he says, that does not give the city’s Black residents “false hope.”

“We don’t want to get set up for another study or for them to put this up on a shelf to collect dust,” said Brown in an interview with Roland Martin. “We must have action. We believe in cash-plus — not either or.”

Eric McDowell, chairperson of the African American Reparations Advisory Committee (AARAC) — a task force set up by San Francisco city government — said that recommendations presented to the Board of Supervisors is an “appraisal” and he is “hopeful” that the city will deliver much needed compensation for the Black community.

McDowell made the statements in an interview with San Francisco’s KRON 4 News on March 24. AARAC presented recommendations on March 14 to address the harms and struggles Black Americans have endured since they began migrating west after the Civil War.

“What the city will decide to do is fully in the hands of the supervisors, mayor’s office and full leadership of the city,” McDowell said in the six-minute segment. “We’re hopeful as a committee that they will take up the charge and do what they believe both is right to do and have the capacity to do.”

The recommendations, McDowell said, are only in “draft” form at this stage. They cover economic empowerment, education, generational wealth building and public policies for the benefit of Black San Franciscans. McDowell referred to the recommendation as an estimation of value.

“Our task (AARAC) was to do the appraisal and it’s the city’s task to determine, based upon recommendations, what they decide to adopt,” McDowell said.

“Once again, that conversation is yet to come: the determination of how it will get financed and made possible,” McDowell continued, talking about reparations payments to San Franciscans who are Black American descendants of enslaved people.

The 14-person reparations committee advises the Board of Supervisors, Mayor London Breed, the Human Rights Commission and the public on the development of a San Francisco Reparations Plan. The plan features ways that San Francisco’s policies have harmed Black lives.

Giving qualifying Black residents individual payments of $5 million, the elimination of personal debt and tax liabilities of African American households and securing annual incomes at a minimum $97,000 for 250 years are part of the package the committee is proposing.

San Francisco’s Black population is 6% of the city’s total number of residents and they make up 38% of the city’s homeless population.

The AARAC has documented decades of policies and laws that systematically affected Black Americans in San Francisco, limiting their access to productive employment property, education and the ability to build generational wealth.

A decision by the Board of Supervisors on the amount of compensation owed to Black residents or the form it will take is not expected until June. Meanwhile, the city is mulling over the fact that providing financial compensation will push it deeper into the red, a point that has been made by some city officials that many who oppose reparations for Black Americans have latched onto and referenced in their arguments.

“I wish we had this kind of money in San Francisco’s general fund, but if we want to maintain the services that exist today, we do not,” said Supervisor Hillary Ronen in a San Francisco Chronicle interview.

San Francisco is currently facing a deficit of more than $720 million over the next 24 months. Supervisor Dean Preston told the San Francisco Chronicle that reparations are warranted but not financially feasible for the city.