Update:  New York Just Pushed Its Reparations Study to 2029.

• The new deadline is 2029 — nearly four years past the original target. That’s two more election cycles, one more presidential term, and many more potential setbacks before New York even recommends anything. The commission was never empowered to distribute money; it can only study and suggest. And even that has been delayed

• Assemblymember Michaelle Solages, chair of the Black, Puerto Rican, Hispanic and Asian Legislative Caucus, defended the delay by saying the report must be “accurate and current” given ongoing attacks on DEI and the disenfranchisement of Black communities. Translation: the political environment is so hostile that they’re afraid a weak or rushed report will be weaponized against the movement

• The commission has already collected 200+ hours of testimony and is planning upcoming public hearings in Hempstead and Harlem. Commission Chair Seanelle Hawkins is urging New Yorkers to continue engaging — in person and virtually

• Commissioners will now receive legal indemnification — shielding them from personal lawsuits for actions taken in their official capacity. The fact that this protection had to be added tells you everything about the environment these commissioners are operating in

• New York’s history with slavery is deep. By the mid-18th century, a significant percentage of white households in New York City enslaved Black people. New York City was also a major financial hub for the American cotton trade — meaning Northern wealth was directly built on Southern slavery. Slavery in New York wasn’t fully abolished until 1827.

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• The New York State Commission on Reparation Remedies was established by Governor Hochul in December 2023 (Bill 1163A), co-sponsored by Assemblywoman Michaelle Solages and Senator James Sanders Jr. The nine-member volunteer commission has held 19 public hearings across the state and will submit a formal report with recommendations to the governor and legislature

• Dr. Ron Daniels (President, Institute of the Black World 21st Century) opened by invoking Medgar Evers on Memorial Day — a WWII veteran who fought for this country and was shotgunned down in his driveway in Mississippi — and the hundreds of thousands of Black GIs who were denied GI Bill benefits due to racial discrimination while defending a nation that refused to defend them

• Lynette Battle, a Foundational Black American whose grandparents were sharecroppers and great-grandparents were enslaved, delivered one of the most powerful testimonies of the hearing: “It is difficult to watch this country suddenly find money and political will for funds connected to January 6 hooliganism and insurrectionists while still hesitating to fully acknowledge and repair the lasting harm caused by slavery, segregation, and systematic discrimination against Black Americans. That contradiction is painful and deeply offensive.”

• Long Island’s hidden history of slavery was front and center — enslaved Africans were present throughout Long Island as early as the 1600s, there was a live slave market at the foot of Wall Street in 1711, and New York State did not fully abolish slavery until 1827. Post-WWII redlining, racial covenants, and discriminatory lending in Nassau County deliberately blocked Black families from homeownership and generational wealth — a direct line to the inequities Long Island communities face today

• The hearing surfaced a key constitutional debate that will shape the bill’s future: Foundational Black American advocates like the US Freeman Project argued that race-based language in the bill is constitutionally vulnerable under the Equal Protection Clause of the 14th Amendment — pointing to the dismantling of race-based affirmative action, the Fearless Fund, and Black farmer programs as proof. Their alternative: a lineage-based, status-based approach tied to direct descendants of U.S. slavery, which they argue is constitutionally defensible