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Hochul signs bill to study reparations for slavery

Dec 20, 2023 12:56 pm

Natalie Duddridge reports for CBS News that Gov. Kathy Hochul signed legislation on Dec. 19 to create a committee to consider reparations for slavery. The commission will study the history of slavery in New York state and what reparations could look like. Nicole Carty, executive director of the group Get Free, said, "You can see the unreckoned-with impacts of slavery in things such as Black poverty, Black maternal mortality." New York abolished slavery in 1827. Hochul said, "Let's be clear about what reparations means. It doesn't mean fixing the past, undoing what happened. We can't do that. No one can. But it does mean more than giving people a simple apology 150 years later. This bill makes it possible to have a conversation, a reasoned debate about what we want the future to look like. And I can think of nothing more democratic than that." Read more about this story at CBS News.