State bills require study into historical effects of slavery

By Michael Falcone
Daily Bruin Senior Staff

Scholars from the University of California are being asked to
study the economics of slavery.

Two bills, sponsored by California State Senator Tom Hayden,
D-Santa Monica, are aimed at researching and reporting the extent
to which businesses, including insurance companies, profited from
slavery.

SB 1737, the UC Slavery Colloquium bill, requires the UC to put
together a group of experts to hold a conference and draft a
proposal to study those issues.

The other Hayden-sponsored measure, SB 2199, requests California
insurance companies to turn over records regarding slaveholder
insurance policies. Gov. Gray Davis signed both bills into law late
last month.

Rocky Rushing, Hayden’s chief of staff, said both bills
developed from “revelations” regarding insurance
policies taken out by slave owners on slaves in the Old South.

“(The slave owners) certainly weren’t taking out
workers compensation policies for the slaves,” Rushing
said.

While both bills enjoyed broad support in the Senate and the
Assembly, a contingent from the legislature’s Republican
caucus was unsupportive of the bills.

“There are problems in our nation’s history, but
asking people today to pay for the sins of yesterday and the sins
of our forefathers is a logistical nightmare,” said Steve
Lesher, a spokesman for Assemblywoman Lynne Leach, R-Walnut
Creek.

“Some of these companies may not even have records that go
back 150 years,” Lesher continued.

Leach, along with a group of 11 other assembly Republicans,
voted against SB 1737 when it was heard on the assembly floor Aug.
23.

Some lawmakers questioned why this bill was introduced in the
legislature of California, which was not a major slaveholding
state.

But Rushing said the issues this bill will examine are important
for Californians, especially those who have an ancestral connection
to former slaves.

“There are plenty of descendants of slaves from the South
living here in California and certainly here in Los Angeles,”
Rushing said.

“Just because the matter is taken up by a state
legislature far removed from the South doesn’t mean it
doesn’t have an impact here,” he continued.

Neither bill explicitly mentions what will be done with the
findings, although the information will be presented to the state
legislature.

SB 2199 was endorsed by California State Conference of the
NAACP, the American Civil Liberties Union and the Rainbow Push
Coalition.

The Southern Christian leadership Conference of Greater Los
Angeles also expressed their support for the bill in a letter
submitted to the Senate Rules Committee.

“The truth that Africans in America were dehumanized to
the level of beasts of burden … is more than a sad chapter in our
national past,” the letter said. “It is an awful
reality that has shaped the collective life of ancestors of
slaves.”

Mary Spletter, a spokeswoman for the UC office of the President,
said UCOP is in the process of sending out queries to various UC
campuses to gauge interest from faculty members who may want to
take part in the colloquium.

Spletter said the funding for the conference and study will come
from the UC’s General Fund.

Officials at the UCLA and UC Berkeley Departments of History
could not comment immediately on whether or not they were asked to
take part in the study.