California to apologize for slavery, racism against Black Americans

California will formally apologize for slavery and its lingering effects on Black Americans in the state under a new law Gov. Gavin Newsom signed Thursday.

The legislation was part of a package of reparations bills introduced this year that seek to offer repair for decades of policies that drove racial disparities for African Americans. Newsom also approved laws to improve protections against hair discrimination for athletes and increase oversight over the banning of books in state prisons.

“The State of California accepts responsibility for the role we played in promoting, facilitating, and permitting the institution of slavery, as well as its enduring legacy of persistent racial disparities,” the Democratic governor said in a statement. “Building on decades of work, California is now taking another important step forward in recognizing the grave injustices of the past –- and making amends for the harms caused.”

Newsom signed the bills after vetoing a proposal Wednesday that would have helped Black families reclaim or be compensated for property that was unjustly seized by the government through eminent domain. The bill by itself would not have been able to take full effect because lawmakers blocked another bill to create a reparations agency that would have reviewed claims.

California entered the union as a free state in 1850. In practice, it sanctioned slavery and approved policies and practices that thwarted Black people from owning homes and starting businesses. Black families were terrorized, their communities aggressively policed and their neighborhoods polluted, according to a report published by a first-in-the-nation state reparations task force.

Efforts to study reparations at the federal level have stalled in Congress for decades.

California has moved further along on the issue than any other state. But state lawmakers did not introduce legislation this year to give widespread direct payments to African Americans, which frustrated some reparations advocates.

Newsom approved a $297.9 billion budget in June that included up to $12 million for reparations legislation that became law.

He already signed laws included in the reparations package aimed at improving outcomes for students of color in K-12 career education programs. Another proposal the Black caucus backed this year that would ban forced labor as a punishment for crime in the state constitution will be on the ballot in November.