By Joanne M. Braxton, PhD. Founder and CEO, Braxton Institute

**Swearing in of the Speaker of the House (54990132518).jpg**
Governor Moore, Lt. Governor Aruna Miller and First Lady Dawn Blythe Moore attend the Swearing in Ceremony for the Speaker of the House by Joe Andrucyk, Patrick Siebert, Polly Irungu at The House Chamber, 100 State Circle, Annapolis MD 21401

In December 2025, Maryland lawmakers overrode Gov. Wes Moore’s veto, leading to the establishment of the Maryland Reparations Commission. After generations of chattel slavery and Jim Crow, the state of Maryland is finally acknowledging what descendants and communities have said for generations: reparations are necessary.

In the wake of Governor Moore’s veto of statewide reparations commission legislation, the Braxton Institute offered “ A Reparative Vision for Maryland” and proposals for meaningful action now. Rooted in deep community knowledge, we proposed a statewide vision for racial equity and meaningful, community-led repair. The most impactful of these is arguably the Maryland Reparations Commission. Speaking on the need for an override, Senator Charles Sydnor had a message for his colleagues: “Let’s be clear: Slavery may have ended 150 years ago, but segregation, redlining, and discrimination stretched well into our own lifetime. The lingering effects are real, and we cannot prepare [for] what we refuse to acknowledge.”

This moment may seem quick to some. However, the establishment of a reparations commission in Maryland is the result of intergenerational advocacy from Black communities across the state. Additionally, the Maryland Reparations Commission exists because grassroots organizations, groups, and activists across the state refused to accept denial as the definitive answer. The Commission builds on the state's past efforts to acknowledge the harms done to Black communities, including formal support for H.R. 40, an apology, and recognition of the need for reparations.

Maryland’s economy and institutions, like much of the United States, have been shaped by enslavement and racial exploitation. That legacy did not end with emancipation. It continued and evolved, showing up in housing discrimination, unequal education, labor exclusion, policing, medical neglect, and the destruction or displacement of Black communities. For example, communities like Lakeland in College Park, Maryland, have been protesting and documenting harm for more than 50 years since misguided urban planning mandated the destruction of more than two-thirds of their communities. Riversdale House Museum, located in Prince George’s County, MD, was a site of enslavement and horrific harm to enslaved African Americans, touching my own family and its community. The same is true of Montpelier Mansion in Laurel, Maryland, the seat of an industrial plantation where my great-grandfather and his mother and his brothers were enslaved.

The Maryland Reparations Commission is an opportunity to address these harms and to impact future actions that can create justice for Black lives in Maryland. It requires the state to face its policy history, not as an accident, but as an interconnected set of systems built to extract and exclude, creating a debt yet to be repaid.

One of the most significant historical examples is Crownsville State Hospital, formerly known as the Hospital for the Negro Insane of Maryland. Crownsville is a painful reminder that state violence has not only been economic or physical; it has also been medical and institutional. Black psychiatric patients were housed in a segregated medical system that reduced them to near enslavement, denied them dignity, and destroyed families. Descendants deserve recompense.

The establishment of the Maryland Reparations Commission is to be celebrated. It is the result of steady, strategic organizing by community leaders, activists, organizers, local coalitions, historians, and community groups. Homes within various neighborhoods were bulldozed and burned - destroying the fabric of our once vital Black community established at the beginning of the 20th century. “Lakelanders, surrounded by racially hostile communities, lost their homes, their businesses, their racially safe community, and their way of life built over generations.”

Indeed, as documented in the harm report, the multifaceted harm to Lakelanders was enabled by several entities, including the state of Maryland, whose laws enabled the seizure of land. The City of College Park, the University of Maryland, the Washington Metropolitan Area Transit Authority (WMATA), Prince George’s County Public Schools, and the Maryland-National Capital Park and Planning Commission all played a role. Each entity is responsible for the harm and has an obligation not to look away. The Maryland Reparations Commission must support the well-documented work of smaller commissions addressing harms caused by multiple entities, as only a statewide commission can. Oversight will be required.

In Maryland, historic legacies of harm are not just memories. They are documented and visible in the landscape. They can be seen in historic buildings and former institutions that show how a racial order created wealth for some and harm for others. The work to repair these harms will advance, due to the persistence of the Legislative Black Caucus, as well as people who have worked for years in rooms without cameras and in meetings that never made the news, whose names we may never know.

The Braxton Institute for Sustainability, Resiliency and Joy, and Reparations for Lakeland Now have been working in coalition with the City of College Park Restorative Justice Commission, the Greenbelt Reparations Commission, the Maryland Lynching Truth and Reconciliation Commission, and other organizations to help make reparative justice in Maryland a reality on the local level and now statewide. Now, the work is to make sure the Maryland Reparations Commission stays focused on the needs of our communities, acts with urgency, and remains accountable.

In the coming months, the Braxton Institute will organize in-person and virtual convenings and Dialogues on Resisting and Thriving to support Reparations for Lakeland Now, the College Park Restorative Justice Commission, the Greenbelt Restorative Justice Commission, and other communities of repair in coordinating insights, sharing models, supporting each other, and making sure that our viewpoints are represented. The first of these convenings, the Black-Eyed Susans for Reparations Convening, will take place in February 2025 month, with small-group work sessions among our existing collaborators. To stay abreast of these and other community activities, please read our blogs and newsletters and follow us on social media.