New York City lawmakers approve bill to study slavery and reparations
NEW YORK — New York City lawmakers on Thursday approved legislation to investigate the city’s significant role in slavery and consider reparations for the descendants of enslaved people.
The bill passed by the City Council still needs to be signed by Democratic Mayor Eric Adams. Adams did not respond to a request for comment.
New York has completely abolished slavery in 1827But companies, including the forerunners of some modern banks, continued… have a financial advantage from the slave trade — probably until 1866.
“The reparations movement is often misunderstood as just a call for reparations,” Assemblywoman Farah Louis, a Democrat who sponsored one of the bills, told the City Council, explaining that systemic forms of oppression continue to affect people through redlining, environmental racism and underfunded services in predominantly Black neighborhoods.
The bills would direct the city’s Commission on Racial Equity to propose solutions to the legacy of slavery, including reparations. It would also create a truth and reconciliation process to establish historical facts about slavery in the state.
One of the proposals also calls for the city to place a sign on Wall Street in Manhattan marking the site of New York’s first slave market.
The Commission would cooperate with an existing state commission also considering the possibility of reparations for slavery. A report from the state commission is expected in early 2025. The city’s effort would not have to produce recommendations until 2027.
The city commission was created from a 2021 racial justice initiative during the administration of then-Mayor Bill de Blasio. While it was initially expected that reparations would be considered, it instead led to the creation of the commission, which tracked cost-of-living data and added a commitment to remedy “past and ongoing harms” to the preamble to the city charter.
“Your call and the call of your ancestors for reparations have not gone unheard,” Linda Tigani, executive director of the Commission for Racial Equity, said at a news conference ahead of the council’s vote.
A financial impact analysis of the bills estimates the studies will cost $2.5 million.
New York is the latest city to explore reparations. Tulsa, Oklahoma, home to an infamous massacre of black residents in 1921, announced a similar commission last month.
Evanston, Illinois, was the first city to offer reparations to Black residents and their descendants in 2021including paying out some $25,000 payments in 2023, according to PBSEligibility was based on damages suffered as a result of the city’s discriminatory housing policies or practices.
San Francisco approved reparations in February, but the mayor later scrapped the funding, saying: that reparations should instead be implemented by the federal government. California has budgeted $12 million for a reparations program which included helping black residents research their ancestry, but it was rejected in the state legislature earlier this month.