‘If not us, then who?’: inside the landmark push for reparations for Black Californians

Taskforce including civil rights leaders and attorneys scrutinizes legacy of centuries of injustice

Dawn Basciano's ancestors arrived five generations ago in Coloma, California, as enslaved people, forced to leave behind an infant son enslaved to another family in Missouri.

Those ancestors, Nancy and Peter Gooch, were freed in 1850 when California joined the union as a free state, and 20 years later, their son and his family were able to join them in the fertile agricultural land north-east of Sacramento. Their journey west was funded by the sweat and hard work of Nancy, who grew and sold fruit, mended clothes and cooked for the local miners.