How California's Reparations Task Force Reached Its Final Proposal

In June 2022, I took an early-morning Amtrak train for a five-hour trip to Allensworth, a town located 30 minutes off Interstate 5 near Bakersfield. It was founded in 1908 and envisioned as a Black utopia.

To escape racist violence after the Civil War, Black people built settlements known as freedmen’s towns in a number of states across the country.

Allensworth, founded by Lt. Col. Allen Allensworth, who was enslaved in Kentucky before fleeing and becoming a Union soldier, was the first of its kind in California, and it was governed entirely by Black people.

Before boarding, I noticed a Black, elderly woman with a walker and a colorful knit bag. She allowed me to carry her walker as we boarded the train. We found seats across from each other and shared food, stories and songs during the ride.

She leaned in when she spoke, her eyes scanning the passing scenery. Our conversation was lively. Her enthusiasm and soprano voice — she sang with the Oakland Symphony Chorus, and wasn’t shy about singing on the train — featured prominently in the story KQED published a few months later about the history of Allensworth and the state park in town.

Maxine Butler died about a month after the story was published. She was 70. She died from COVID-19 and pancreatic cancer, according to her obituary. A fiercely religious woman, she told me God would take her when it was time. Yet, I couldn’t help but think of her death as part of a larger tragedy.

In 2021, the life expectancy for Black people was 70.8 years compared to 76.4 years for white people, according to the Kaiser Family Foundation. If the U.S. had a more equitable health care system, would Butler have had a few more years to live?

There are over 30 pages of recommendations to address mental and physical harm in the California Reparations Task Force’s final report. The nine-member body examined California’s history over the last two years and submitted its final recommendations to the state Legislature on Thursday, June 29.

I attended nearly all of the meetings. I even canceled plans to be present because what we pay attention to is an expression of our values — as a society and as a media organization. Attending these meetings has been exciting, boring, confusing and heartwarming.

There were moments when I felt like I was at a live concert with songs, dance and verbal affirmations from the audience. At other times, it was like watching friends fight. There were family reunion vibes and also tedious moments when I started to think about my next meal. Through it all, I spent more time with this task force than I have with some of my close family members.

I know the cadence of their voices. I know to expect mini-sermons from Rev. Amos C. Brown. When needed, Dr. Jovan Scott Lewis, chair of UC Berkeley’s geography department, would calmly get members back on track by summarizing points while also posing questions. A colleague once described the skill as wizardry.

Lewis also reminded the audience to do their reading. I read and I researched. I live-tweeted the meetings. I talked to people. And then, I distilled the information into stories. Racism and systemic inequality are so deeply ingrained in society that I wondered if all the task force’s efforts will have any impact.

Allensworth blossomed into a thriving town before racism squeezed it into submission. Once a destination where Black people from around the country moved for safety and an opportunity to flourish, Allensworth is now a dusty Central Valley outpost. Still, it was on Butler’s bucket list.

I can still hear her singing lyrics from a 1930s gospel hit by Sister Rosetta Tharpe that was later popularized by the folk singer Woody Guthrie. “This train is bound for glory,” she sang. “This train.”

The task force’s report could be bound for glory — or obscurity. Whether or not the recommendations are adopted will, in part, be determined by public pressure. Here’s a timeline of the first-in-the-nation statewide body to study reparations for Black people.

Feb. 21, 2020: Dr. Shirley Weber, then an Assembly member, introduces AB 3121, the legislation that created the task force.

Aug. 29, 2020: The legislation passes the Assembly 33-3. The Assembly floor analysis states that the bill comes at an “opportune time” when there is an “increased willingness to undertake a thoughtful and informed discussion of the issue of reparations.” It also notes that the bill “gives California the opportunity to take the lead in fostering a critically important and long overdue official discussion.”

Aug. 30, 2020: AB 3121 passes the Senate 58-12. The final version of the bill changes the composition of the task force members from eight to nine and adds a “special consideration” clause: “Task Force to Study and Develop Reparation Proposals for African Americans” with “Special Consideration for African Americans Who are Descendants of Persons Enslaved in the United States.”

Sept. 30, 2020: Gov. Gavin Newsom signs AB 3121.

Feb. 1, 2021: Senate President Pro Tempore Toni G. Atkins (D-San Diego) appoints Sen. Steven Bradford (D-Gardena) and San Diego City Council member Monica Montgomery Steppe to the task force. Atkins highlights Bradford’s work as chair of the California Legislative Black Caucus and the Committee on Public Safety.

May 7, 2021: Gov. Newsom announces his appointments to the task force: Dr. Cheryl Grills, Lisa Holder, Donald K. Tamaki, Rev. Amos C. Brown and Dr. Jovan Scott Lewis. “California is leading the nation, in a bipartisan way, on the issue of reparations and racial justice, which is a discussion that is long overdue and deserves our utmost attention,” Newsom said in a press release. Assembly Speaker Anthony Rendon (D-Lakewood) appoints Kamilah Moore and Assemblymember Reginald Jones-Sawyer (D-Los Angeles).

June 1, 2021: The task force meets for the first time. “Your task is to determine the depth of the harm and the ways in which we are to repair that harm,” Sec. of State Weber told task force members.

July 9, 2021: At the second task force meeting, members discussed the importance of community engagement and communications strategy. Both Holder and Grills propose plans, and the members adopt a joint plan to serve as a guide for the process.

Sept. 23-24, 2021: The task force has its first substantive meeting as the body hears from experts on national and international reparations efforts, slavery, political disenfranchisement, and the Great Migration when millions of Black Southerners left the rural South. Many settled in California.

Sept. 24, 2021: William A. Darity Jr., the co-author of From Here to Equality, Reparations for Black Americans in the Twenty-First Century, published an article in The New York Times on the racial wealth gap. Darity is one of the task force’s economic consultants.

Oct. 12-13, 2021: The task force heard from experts on housing, education, environmental racism, banking and the racial wealth gap. The task force members began discussing eligibility. Dr. William Spriggs, a professor at Howard University, and Dr. Thomas Craemer, an associate professor in the Department of Public Policy at the University of Connecticut, provided testimony.

Craemer testified about the wealth gap and lost wages due to slavery, and Spriggs’ testimony focused on labor. Spriggs and Craemer were part of a team of economic experts working with the task force. Spriggs, 68, died earlier this month.

Dec. 7-8, 2021: The task force heard from a series of experts on infrastructure, economics, homelessness and entertainment. Members also discussed the racist and xenophobic remarks posted in the online chat. A collaboration with UCLA’s Ralph J. Bunche Center for African American Studies to create reparations listening sessions throughout the state was approved.

Jan. 27-28, 2022: The task force listened to witnesses on discrimination in technology, public health, mental health and physical health. The members had a robust discussion on eligibility. Weber provided expert testimony.

Feb. 23-24, 2022: The task force discussed past and current reparations efforts. Erwin Chemerinsky, the dean of the UC Berkeley School of Law, testified on the legal implications of Proposition 209, which prohibits the use of race, ethnicity or sex as criteria in public employment, public contracting and public education.

Dr. Kaycea Campbell, professor of economics at Pierce College, along with Craemer, Darity and Spriggs, were unanimously approved as economic consultants by task force members.

February marked the 80th year since people of Japanese descent, many of them Americans, were incarcerated during World War II. KQED’s Annelise Finney wrote about the incarceration of Tamaki’s parents and how the Civil Rights Movement inspired organizing for Japanese reparations.

March 29-30, 2022: The task force discussed the criminal legal system, anti-Black hate crimes, the history of policing and the war on drugs. It also heard from a panel on genealogy and eligibility. The body voted in favor of a lineage-based reparations model.

April 13-14, 2022: The task force held the first in-person meeting at the Third Street Baptist Church in San Francisco, where Brown is the senior pastor. The meeting focused on educational institutions as well as updates on community engagement and strategic communications.

June 1, 2022: The task force published an interim report, which examined “the compounding harms experienced by African Americans as a result of slavery and its lingering effects on American society today.”

Sept. 23-24, 2022: The task force meeting in Los Angeles focused on examples of domestic and international reparations models and the principles for effective reparations based on human rights law.

Dec. 14-15, 2022: The task force met in Oakland to go over a draft of the final recommendations. It heard from local reparations efforts in different cities and counties across California and also re-examined the scope of work for the communications firm.

Jan. 27-28, 2023: The task force met in San Diego. The members heard from experts on tax law, as well as local reparations efforts in San Francisco, Berkeley and Sacramento. Discussions on recommendations for changing laws and what an apology from the state might look like continued.

Feb. 21, 2023: “The Reasons for Reparations,” the first episode of KQED’s five-part YouTube series on reparations, is published.

March 3-4, 2023: Much of the task force meeting in Sacramento served as an update from advisory committees on communications and formal apologies. The members listened to a panel on implementation plans and approved the concept for a California Freedmen’s Affairs office.

March 29-30, 2023: The task force met in Sacramento again. Brown attended the meeting from Ghana as part of Vice President Kamala Harris’ delegation. The members received the final calculations from the economic experts.

May 6, 2023: The task force held its last substantive meeting in Oakland. Though more procedural in content, the audience interaction was contentious and two people were escorted out for disturbing the meeting. The draft of the final report and recommendations were approved.

June 29, 2023: The final task force meeting will be held in Sacramento.