In a gold rush town, some Black families are fighting for land taken from their ancestors

COLOMA, Calif. — In a tiny town where the California gold rush began, Black families seek restitution for land that was taken from their ancestors to make way for a state park. Their efforts in Coloma, a town of about 300 people northeast of Sacramento, are one of the latest examples of Black Americans urging the government to atone for practices that kept them from thriving long after slavery was abolished. Debates over reparations for African Americans often come back to land. That was at the center of a promise originally made — and later broken — by the U.S. government to formerly enslaved Black people in the mid-1800s: Give them up to 40 acres of land as restitution for their time enslaved. For some, the promise of reparations has been nothing more than Fool’s gold, epitomized by a bill in Congress that’s stalled since it was first introduced in the 1980s, even though it’s aimed at studying reparations and named after the original promise. People are also reading… People walk through Marshall Gold Discovery State Historic Park on Oct. 10 in Coloma, Calif. Godofredo A. Vásquez, Associated Press The fight in Coloma is taking place in a state where...