California launches first-in-nation taskforce to study reparations for Black Americans

The committee's first meeting marks the beginning of a two-year process to address the harms of slavery and systemic racism

A first-in-the-country taskforce to study and recommend reparations for African Americans held its inaugural meeting in California on Tuesday, launching a two-year process to address the harms of slavery and systemic racism.

The meeting of the first state reparations committee in the US coincided with a visit by Joe Biden to Oklahoma, during which the president marked the centenary of the Tulsa race massacre and commemorated the hundreds of Black Americans who were killed by a white mob in a flourishing district known as the Black Wall Street". It also comes just over a year after the murder of George Floyd by a white police officer in Minnesota.