Is California giving reparations for slavery? Here’s what you need to know

California’s Reparations Task Force voted on Saturday to recommend that the state issue a formal apology for slavery and potentially provide billions of dollars in cash payments, moving forward a historic effort to enact remedies and compensation for descendants of African Americans who were enslaved in the U.S.

The vote at a public meeting in Oakland marks the beginning of the end of the nine-member panel’s two-year process to craft a report recommending reparations for slavery, which is due to the state Legislature by July 1.

The report will act as a manual for lawmakers and Gov. Gavin Newsom, who established the task force in 2020 to study and gather evidence of the harms of slavery and lasting discrimination, as state elected officials begin to debate righting the wrongs of the past.

The task force has heard testimony from more than 133 witnesses, such as scholars detailing California’s racist history and economists who offered suggestions for how to quantify compensation for health disparities, mass incarceration and housing discrimination against descendants. Families affected by slavery shared their own experiences and called for various forms of remedies in 28 hours of emotional public comment at dozens of monthly meetings since the task force first gathered in June 2021.