The bill, which sets up a commission to study the issue, sailed through the House on a 101-36 vote.
The bill, SB0587, is now headed to the desk of Gov. Wes Moore, a black Democrat. However, his opinion of the bill fellow Democrats want him to sign has been a vague, fence-sitting comment about focusing on “economic advancement” in the state.
If the bill is signed into law, it will make Maryland one of five states – along with California, Illinois, Iowa and New York – that are considering a financial payment as an atonement for African slavery.
Slavery was common in the 1700s in Maryland, one of the 13 British colonies, where tens of thousands of slaves were used to grown and harvest tobacco. From the late 1700s to the U.S. Civil War, however, Maryland had the largest free-black population by the time of the Civil War, in 1861. After the war, black men won the right to vote in Maryland in 1867.
Maryland’s most famous slave is Frederick Douglass, the gifted orator and writer. Born a slave in Talbot County, he became a well-respected abolitionist whose own autobiography "An American Slave" was published in 1845.
Maryland lawmaker Latoya Nkongolo, a Republican state delegate, tells AFN the state is considering millions of dollars in payments while the state government is financially in the red.
“Right now we're in a $3 billion deficit,” she says, “and the House and the Senate just passed a budget that contained an additional $1.6 billion in tax hikes and fees.”
Another logical question for proponents of reparations, Nkongolo says, is deciding who qualifies as a victim of slavery – and who does not – with a financial payment at stake over that key decision.
“Who gets a fraction of the payout?” the GOP lawmaker asks. “I mean, our Governor's of Jamaican descent. Would he qualify?”
