N.J. Institute for Social Justice launches council to study reparations

At an event in Perth Amboy today, the New Jersey Institute for Social Justice (NJISJ) launched the New Jersey Reparations Council, a new body that will aim to study the legacy of slavery in New Jersey and the possibility of providing reparations to those still impacted by it.

“We can draw a direct line from our shameful history to the racial disparities that Black people in New Jersey face, some of the worst in America,” said Ryan Haygood, NJISJ’s president and CEO. “That’s why we are not afraid to say the word ‘reparations.’ And that’s why today we are convening the first-of-its-kind New Jersey Reparations Council.”

The council, which will be co-chaired by Harvard University’s Khalil Gibran Muhammad and Rutgers University’s Taja-Nia Henderson, consists of around 50 members from a variety of progressive advocacy, public policy, and academic arenas. Its nine committees will study a wide range of topics related to slavery and reparations, from the history of slavery itself to its modern-day impacts on things like economic disparities, policing, and heath care.

After a two-year period of research and public meetings, the council aims to produce a report to be released on Juneteenth 2025 – two years to the day from today – that will “serve as a blueprint for New Jersey’s path forward and as a national model for how the challenging but critical work of reparations can be done.”

In attendance at today’s announcement were U.S. Senator Cory Booker, Newark Mayor Ras Baraka, Assemblywoman Shavonda Sumter (D-Paterson), and Perth Amboy Mayor Helmin Caba, all of whom highlighted the ways slavery and discrimination still reverberate in the New Jersey of 2023.

“It is time … to not accept the reality that we live in, but begin to challenge the fact that we still are a nation in the quest for justice, equality, and inclusion,” Booker said. “When you have a specific measurable harm, and you can see the economic impact of that measurable, specific harm, why aren’t we calling the question for justice?”

Both Booker and Sumter have led efforts to create official, government-led reparations task forces in their respective legislative bodies. Booker introduced legislation to create a federal commission to study reparations in April 2019; Sumter, alongside the late State Sen. Ronald Rice (D-Newark), began pushing for a similar New Jersey Reparations Task Force in November 2019.

But neither of those proposals have ever gotten far off the ground, even in New Jersey, where Democrats are in full control of state government and where Sumter has amassed 33 co-sponsors across both legislative chambers. Sumter urged those in attendance at today’s announcement to push their own representatives – some of whom, she said, are nervous about the simple word “reparations” – to support her proposal.

“I appreciate the work of the Institute for Social Justice,” Sumter said. “But we want it [in the statehouse] because that’s the repository where it should lie for historical record, forever, to live in perpetuity.”

Until Sumter or Booker are successful in their efforts, however, the NJISJ’s eventual report will likely be the definitive work on the subject of reparations in New Jersey.