Black Lawmakers Make Their Case for Reparations in Georgia – Capital B News

Leaders of the Georgia Legislative Black Caucus want their state to become the latest to launch a reparations study commission — and they’re not waiting around for the party in power at the Capitol to call for a hearing on the issue.

The GLBC will host a panel discussion with a group of reparations experts at 2:30 p.m. on Thursday inside the Gold Dome to argue in support of House Bill 955, known as the Georgia Equity and Fairness Commission Act.

The legislation, introduced Jan. 22 by state Rep. Roger Bruce, D-Atlanta, would authorize the state to create a commission to examine the impact of slavery in Georgia on the descendants of those who were enslaved and recommend ways to remedy the institution’s lingering effects.

Black lawmakers have dubbed Thursday as “Georgia Reparations Day” in recognition of their efforts. A second panel discussion on the topic will take place at 6:30 p.m. Thursday at Clark Atlanta University’s ​​Thomas Cole Research Center for Science and Technology.

State Rep. Carl Gilliard, D-Savannah, noted that the reparations movement has gained traction in recent years with related efforts to address racial inequality stemming from slavery and Jim Crow already happening at the city and county level in Georgia and at the state level in other parts of the country.

Gilliard and Bruce want the Georgia Legislature to join those ranks to address the Peach State’s own staggering socioeconomic disparities between Black and white residents and to keep the former from falling further behind as Georgia’s population continues growing and changing.

“Now it’s our time to start the conversation,” Gilliard told Capital B Atlanta Tuesday. “I think this is a powerful step for Georgia.”

Bruce said reparations may be the only way to eliminate the racial wealth gap between Black and white Georgians. He noted that both the state and its white residents have disproportionately benefited from generational wealth gained off the backs of enslaved Africans, who themselves were wrongfully denied opportunities to accumulate wealth.

Atlanta’s wealth gap between Black and white households is about as large today as it was when President Abraham Lincoln issued the Emancipation Proclamation, according to a 2022 National Bureau of Economic Research report cited by the Georgia Resilience And Opportunity Fund.

White households in Georgia have about eight times as much wealth as Black households, according to Urban Institute data cited by the GRO. In Atlanta, economic disparities are even larger, with white households having roughly 46 times as much wealth as their Black counterparts, the nonprofit found.

“While we were out in the cotton fields picking cotton, they were making the money off of that and passing it on from generation to generation,” said Bruce, who is Black. “We are in a situation where people are being told to pull themselves up by the bootstraps. We’ve got to give them some boots.”

Black people wouldn’t be the only ones who benefit from a reparations program, according to Bruce. The initiative could help Republicans address lagging quality of life disparities and reduce the number of people who rely on entitlement programs staunchly opposed by the GOP while leveling the economic playing field for the disproportionate number of Black Georgians living in poverty.

“It’s about putting more [Black] people into a frame of mind and a position where they can participate equally in the economy,” Bruce said. “If they could do that, and they can earn revenue at the same rate as their white colleagues, then you wouldn’t need as many social programs and other government subsidies [Republicans] seem to be complaining about all the time.”

Gilliard, the Black caucus’ chair, said creating a reparations program is something Black Georgians, particularly college students, told him they want to see during listening tour stops at HBCU campuses across the state last year.

It’s also an effort caucus leaders committed to when the issue of reparations came up at the Legislature two years ago, he said.

“We made a promise on behalf of the GLBC that we will take steps to look at it,” Gilliard said.

Reparations movement gaining steam

The movement supporting the idea that descendants of enslaved Africans should be compensated for the bondage their ancestors endured has gained momentum in recent years, both before and after the police murder of George Floyd in 2020.

The late U.S. Rep. John Conyers originally proposed the idea for a federal reparations program in 1989. Federal legislation known as the Commission to Study and Develop Reparation Proposals for African Americans Act — H.R. 40 — advanced out of committee for the first time ever on Capitol Hill in April 2021, nearly a year after Floyd was killed.

In 2019, lawmakers in Evanston, Ill., made their city the first in U.S. history to pass a reparations resolution for qualifying Black residents. California introduced America’s first state-level reparations study task force in 2021. Last year, it recommended paying Black Californians up to $1.2 million per person as compensation for its past and present racial wrongs. In December, New York became the second state in the nation to launch a reparations study program.

In Georgia, Fulton County’s leaders launched a reparations study commission in 2021 before setting aside $250,000 about a year ago to fund the study effort. Atlanta lawmakers started a similar effort at the city level in November.

Republican support needed

Bruce and Gilliard are hoping Georgia will follow California and New York’s lead in the near future, but they acknowledged they’ll need Republican help to make it happen since the GOP has majority control of both legislative chambers at the Capitol.

Gilliard said at least one Republican state House member has already voiced support for the study commission, but declined to say who it is. He suggested the fight for reparations in Georgia could take more than one legislative session to bear fruit, but also noted how Republicans and Democrats worked together after the 2020 murder of Ahmaud Arbery to repeal Georgia’s 1863 citizen’s arrest law.

“It’s not going to come overnight,” Gilliard said of passing a state-led reparations effort. “It’s something that we’ve got to start the dialogue on and start to be able to craft. … I believe all things are possible.”

The reparations study bill has been assigned to the Georgia House’s State Planning and Community Affairs committee, which so far hasn’t scheduled a formal hearing for debate, according to Bruce.

The veteran lawmaker said he spoke to Republican Speaker of the House Jon Burns about the reparations study bill before introducing it. He said Burns proposed asking major corporations to open more operation facilities in inner city communities to give better job opportunities to Black residents as a potential form of reparations.

Burns’ office hasn’t responded to a request for comment.

“My response to him was, that was a solution, but not the solution,” Bruce said of Burns. “The remedy is going to be different for different people and that’s the purpose of the study commission, to look at all of the impact and then come up with multiple solutions that people should be able to choose from.”

Members of the public are encouraged to attend both reparations panel events on Thursday to help convince Georgia lawmakers this is something their constituents want. Audience goers can have their questions answered and offer comments during the CAU event Thursday evening.

Panel participants will include David Ragland, co-founder of the Truth Telling Project, a reparations planning and advocacy group, historian Eric Saul, a veteran reparations researcher, and Susie King Taylor Center for Jubilee founder Patt Gunn.