DFL legislators introduced a bill this week that would create an advisory council that would distribute up to $100 million in “reparation grants” to Minnesotans who are descendants of slaves.
SF2368 is sponsored by Sens. Sandy Pappas, of St. Paul, Erin Maye Quade, of Apple Valley, Susan Pha, of Brooklyn Park, Liz Boldon, of Rochester, and Omar Fateh, of Minneapolis. Rep. Cedrick Frazier, DFL-New Hope, is the chief author of a companion bill in the House.
The proposal is titled, “Minnesota Migration Act.”
Language in the bill calls for the creation of a Minnesota Migration Act Advisory Council “to analyze the past economic benefits of slavery and institutional racism that accrued to owners and businesses that received those benefits and to identify and document the money received from the dehumanizing activity of slavery by identifying the public and private institutions that benefited from anti-Black practices.”
Such a council would be tasked with developing criteria “to determine how to distribute funding to compensate persons and address systems harmed by these anti-Black practices and to distribute grants to achieve those compensation goals.”
The legislation directs $100 million from the state’s general fund to establish a reparations grant program. The program and advisory council would be overseen by the Minnesota Department of Human Rights. It also makes a number of declarations, acknowledgements and apologies on behalf of the state of Minnesota “for the past occurrence of chattel slavery and notable slave owners” who resided in the state. It would also require the state to issue an apology to the family of George Floyd.
Introduction of the bill comes just days after Gov. Tim Walz held a press conference detailing an annual February budget forecast that includes a looming $6 billion deficit. It also comes just weeks after Democrats in the U.S. House of Representatives introduced a bill with similar aims and goals.
$100M appropriation returns in 2025 bill
It’s not the first time a reparations-related grant program has been introduced at the Capitol.
Last year two dozen House Democrats co-authored a bill with the same “Minnesota Migration Act” title. It, too, outlined a list of provisions making historical declarations on behalf of the state.
That bill, HF5456, was introduced in the waning days of session and had no companion legislation in the Senate. The legislation was markedly different from the bill introduced this week, in that the 2024 bill only called for a $500,000 appropriation to study a reparations grant program. However, a 2023 version of the bill did include the $100 million appropriation.
Democrats have just a one-seat margin in the Senate and a 67-67 tie in the House, meaning it would be a steep climb for the bill to even receive a committee hearing, let alone reach the desk of Gov. Tim Walz by the end of May.
New Hope legislator says ‘we’re not going to stop pushing until that debt is paid’
To date, none of the sponsors of the legislation have made public comments inside the Capitol on their rationale for proposing the bill this session.
But political activists with the local chapter of Black Lives Matter met to discuss the “Minnesota Migration Act” last month, where Rep. Frazier said the country “doesn’t want to face the fact of just how dark and how atrocious and egregious our history was in this country, and acknowledge the harm that was done to the descendants of those folks.”
“There is truly a debt owed, and we are not going to stop coming, we’re not going to stop talking about it, we’re not going to stop pushing until that debt is paid,” Frazier added.
In September 2023, Frazier also opined on the subject in a social media post.
“This country refuses to have a serious discussion about reparations for the descendants of enslaved Africans,” Frazier wrote. “Instead we have descendants of colonizers using our judicial system to impede progress and perpetuate white supremacy.”
Hank Long
Hank Long is a journalism and communications professional whose writing career includes coverage of the Minnesota legislature, city and county governments and the commercial real estate industry. Hank received his undergraduate degree at the University of Minnesota, where he studied journalism, and his law degree at the University of St. Thomas. The Minnesota native lives in the Twin Cities with his wife and four children. His dream is to be around when the Vikings win the Super Bowl.
