Slaveholder policies publicly investigatedAncestral history of African-Americans and legacy of slave trade topics of law

Authored by retired state Sen. Tom Hayden, the law also serves to bridge the gaps in the ancestral records of black Americans.

"This will have a profound impact on the descendants of slaves and will start healing the concerns we have in our community," said Miriam Armstrong of the San Francisco branch of the NAACP at the hearing. "This is the beginning, I think, of something really important in our lives."

Eighteen insurance providers will have to comb through their archival records for the old policies and are required to report their findings to the state Insurance Commission at the beginning of June.

A University of California colloquium will analyze the economic impacts of slavery in the state, including any details on how slaveholders and insurance companies benefited from the policies.

Once the information has been compiled, Insurance Commissioner Harry Low says the resulting archives will be posted on the Internet and will also be available at two public viewing rooms in the state.

Kali Akuno, a member of the National Coalition of Blacks for Reparations in America (N'COBRA), sees this law as the start of similar efforts nationwide. He hopes the results of such efforts will help the ancestors of slaves gain some sort of reparations.

"Tom Haden's bill was a ground-breaker," he said. "This is critical for providing a factual and historical basis for how individuals and institutions profited from slavery."<