California moves to create genealogy office for reparations eligibility

(The Center Square) – The California Senate Judiciary Committee approved a bill that would create a new state agency for implementing the state’s reparations task force recommendations and determine which individuals qualify as descendants of American slaves.  SB 1403, authored by State Sen. Steven Bradford, D-Gardena, would establish the California American Freedmen Affairs Agency. The bill would direct CAFA to implement suggestions from the state’s reparations task force, a body created by the state legislature, which recommended that eligible black residents of California could be owed up to $1.2 million, according to CalMatters.  Chief among the task force’s recommendations was the creation of CAFA as a cabinet-level agency to implement any of the Task Force’s recommendations that are enacted by the state legislature and signed by the governor. CAFA would also create a “Genealogy Office” charged with developing a process for determining and assist with determining individuals’ eligibility for “descendant” status.  After passing the Judiciary Committee, the bill kept its provision defining descendant as including “descendants of a free Black person living in the United States prior to the end of the 19th century,” but amended its section that had included “African American descendants of a chattel enslaved person [living...