New York legislators are poised to pass a bill to create a commission to study the history of slavery in the state and to possibly recommend remedies and reparations to descendants of enslaved people.
Senate Bill 1163A says that New York's economic and cultural status has "been built and shaped by slavery" and that the state's income disparity, which is the largest in the country, "is in large part the legacy of our slave system."
"A sufficient inquiry has not been made into the effects of the institution of slavery on present day society in New York," the bill reads.
The New York bill is part of a national push to provide restitution for African Americans. It also comes just a month after a California task force voted to approve similar recommendations for one of the most significant reparation campaigns for descendants of enslaved people in modern U.S. history. In the past few weeks, federal lawmakers have introduced reparations legislation on Capitol Hill.
Democratic lawmakers in New York hope the Legislature will approve SB1163A in the coming days after the measure struggled for years to gain traction. State Senator James Sanders Jr. has proposed legislation to establish a reparations commission in New York since 2017, but the bill has never been voted on by either chamber.
"There's a real question of whether slavery would have been economically feasible without New York," Sanders told Politico. "New York provided the insurance for the slave industry; New York paid for many of the votes; New York bought much of the cotton."
Six years after a version of the bill was proposed, legislators are signaling that they're confident it will pass this year as the legislative session winds down. On Tuesday, state Assemblywoman Michaelle Solages introduced a version of the bill in the lower chamber.
The reparations campaign in California, which seeks $500 billion in payments, was criticized by some for seeking to provide restitution to residents living in a state that was not among the 15 Southern slave states. Like California, New York was one of 11 free states, but slaves are believed to have first arrived there around 1627, and slavery was not outlawed in the state until 1827—facts that Sanders' amended bill aims to address.
"Contrary to what many believe, slavery was not just a Southern institution," the bill states. "Prior to the American Revolution, there were more enslaved Africans in New York City than in any other city, except Charleston, South Carolina."
Sanders' revised proposal now includes the "long-standing generational impacts of slavery on African-Americans in New York," including housing discrimination, unequal pay, voter suppression, police brutality and disproportionate rates of incarceration.
Newsweek reached out to Sanders via email for comment.
If the bill passes, a commission could be set up as early as January 2024. There is no deadline as to when the nine-member panel would need to complete its report or offer its recommendations on reparations. New York would be the second major state, after California, to study reparations.
Three of the commission's nine members would be selected by the governor, three by the state Senate majority leader and three by the Assembly speaker—positions all held by Democrats. If the bill is approved by the Legislature, it would go to Governor Kathy Hochul for her signature to become law.
"Reparations is not just about a paycheck, it's much more than that," Solages said. "It's atoning, it's talking about what we can do to support and uplift Black New Yorkers throughout this great state."
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Katherine Fung is a Newsweek reporter based in New York City. Her focus is reporting on U.S. and world politics. ... Read more
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