New Jersey Council Recommends Reparations Policies In Historic Report

On Juneteenth, a state reparations council released a sweeping report calling for bold action to address the enduring legacy of slavery and systemic racism in the Garden State.

The report was the culmination of a two-year initiative spearheaded by the New Jersey Institute for Social Justice, in collaboration with prominent academics, faith leaders and advocates. By tracing New Jersey’s history as the “slave state of the North” to the persistent racial disparities of today, it underscores the state’s severe criminal justice and wealth gaps – which are among the worst in the nation.

Council members developed nearly 100 policy recommendations, ranging from direct cash payments to the expansion of socioeconomic programs for Black New Jerseyans. According to those who served on the council, the goal is to pursue reparations as a comprehensive and holistic form of repair.

“Black people flourishing is at the heart of reparations, and history shows us that when Black people flourish, everyone benefits,” the report states. “The policy recommendations are transformative – not just in the impact they will have on Black people in the state, but in how some will require a shift in our current legal and social presumptions.”

Reparations have been awarded to several groups in the United States, including Japanese American families who were incarcerated during World War II and later received a formal apology and $20,000 in compensation from the federal government.

In 1865, General William Sherman’s Field Order No. 15 designated about 400,000 acres of Confederate land for formerly enslaved African Americans as a form of reparations. This promise, however, was quickly rescinded and never fully realized. 

Black communities have since sought ways to make reparations a reality. Over the decades, the movement has evolved, with advocates, lawmakers and faith leaders continuing to push for reparations.

In New Jersey, the journey began in 2019 when the late state Sen. Ron Rice, Assemblywoman Shavonda Sumter (D-Passaic) and other members of the Legislative Black Caucus introduced a bill to create a task force to study reparations.

According to Jean-Pierre Brutus, convenor for the council, New Jersey was the first state to put forth such legislation in the modern era. Since then, states like California and New York have established their own commissions to examine reparations, with California already issuing formal recommendations. However, New Jersey’s bill has yet to advance.

The New Jersey Institute for Social Justice decided to move forward with its own council, in partnership with the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation. They announced this effort on Juneteenth in 2023 in Perth Amboy, “a major site of trafficking of enslaved Africans,” said Brutus. Since then, the council has held a series of public meetings to also receive input from New Jerseyans for its study.

The report begins with the history that New Jersey “tells itself,” which reparations council members said was key to understanding how systems of racism have been upheld. 

“Over half of New Jerseyans simply don’t know that slavery happened here, or that New Jersey was a slave society,” Brutus said. 

From its founding in the 1600s, the state codified and profited from the forced labor of more than 12,000 Black people. By 1830, New Jersey held more enslaved people than all other northern states combined. 

Slavery was not only foundational to New Jersey’s economy—fueling agriculture and the growth of its leading institutions like Princeton and Rutgers—but also to its legal and political systems. The state was the last in the North to abolish slavery, only doing so in 1866, and even then, only after first paying reparations to enslavers for their “lost property.”

“This history is one that has not just laid the foundation for where we are, but really, brick by brick erected these structures,” said Taja-Nia Henderson, co-chair of the council.

The reparations report details how, even after emancipation, New Jersey’s Black residents faced decades of discrimination. The state’s own Jim Crow era saw widespread segregation, exclusion from the GI Bill’s benefits, redlining and racially restrictive covenants. Today, these policies echo racial inequalities in health, education, incarceration and wealth, the report says.

Some of the policy proposals to repair the harm of slavery include: cash payments to descendants of enslaved people, policies to expand and protect voting rights, increasing the state minimum wage, establishing universal health coverage, expanding affordable homeownership, and more.

“We also call for the state to reissue a new apology, one that acknowledges the state’s responsibility and that the state has a responsibility to repair the harm to slavery,” said Brutus. 

The report’s release comes at a critical moment, as the nation grapples with attacks on diversity initiatives and efforts to erase America’s racial history. The council urges New Jersey’s elected officials to act on its recommendations and for the public to confront the state’s history.

“This is a vision for rethinking the role of government in making people whole, and we are laying out a compendium of policy recommendations that will do excellent work towards repairing some of the harm,” said Henderson.

“For Such a Time as This: The Nowness for Reparations for Black People in New Jersey” will be unveiled on Juneteenth at 7 p.m. at the New Jersey Performing Arts Center. The public can sign up for free tickets to attend the event in person. It will also be streamed online.