Democratic state Sen. Shervin Jones from West Park, who’s sponsoring legislation to curb firearm violence, said Rep. Sen. Blaise Ingoglia’s bill is the latest example by Republicans to put issues impacting Floridians on the back burner. PHOTOS COURTESY OF FACEBOOK

By DAVID L. SNELLING Special to South Florida Times

MIAMI – A bill that asks voters to amend the Florida Constitution to ban reparations for descendants of slavery is apparently headed for a heated debate during the upcoming 2024 legislative Session.

Contentious Rep. Sen. Blaise Ingoglia, who led a failed effort to disband the Florida Democratic Party, filed SJR-82 last week seeking voters’ approval on next year’s ballot.

Ingoglia from Tampa Bay said the bill would create a new section in Article X of the state’s Constitution that any government in Florida or political subdivision may not pay compensation in the

form of reparations to an individual who is a descendant of an enslaved individual who lived in the U.S. before December 6, 1865.

Ingoglia would need an affirmative vote of at least 60 percent of the Florida Legislature in both chambers to place the amendment on the ballot.

If he gets the green light, then 60 percent of the voters must approve the Constitutional amendment.

Ingoglia told reporters the proposed Constitutional amendment would ban elected officials from using the issue of reparations for political gain while also giving voters a direct voice on the matter.

“Congress, as well as politicians in states like California, and others, are

proposing reparations. Florida should be proactive because bad ideas in some states seem to find their way into other states,” he said. “Giving the voters the option to enshrine the prohibition into our Constitution takes the prospect of vote buying in the form of ‘reparations’ off the table, in order for legislators and community leaders to talk about how to really make a difference in Black and brown communities.”

The proposed Constitutional amendment pales in comparison to issues like affording housing, homeowners’ insurance and gun violence.

Democratic state Sen. Shervin Jones from West Park, who’s sponsoring legislation to curb firearm violence, said Ingoglia’s bill is the latest example by

Republicans to put issues impacting Floridians on the back burner. "How can we take a bill seriously from someone who literally tried to "Cancel" the Democratic Party legislatively last year? It is perennially disappointing that Sen. Ingoglia and his allies in Tallahassee choose to manufacture crises over taking action on the pressing issues facing Floridians today," Jones said in a statement to the South Florida Times. "This is yet another political scare tactic intended to distract from what’s actually happening and the

"We have a responsibility as elected officials to serve as a voice for all of our constituents, so if Sen. Ingoglia is serious about doing his job, I call on him to start by actually prioritizing the issues important to Florida families."

During the 2023 Legislative Session, Ingoglia, former chair of the Florida Republican Party, sponsored legislation called the Ultimate Cancel Act, to end the Democratic Party for supporting the institution of slavery within its platform.

It died in the Ethics and Elections committee.

Florida has taken actions to compensate survivors of enslaved people and victims of massacres at the hands of whites.

In 1994, then-Florida Gov. Lawton Chiles sponsored an act that paid survivors of the 1923 Rosewood massacre $150,000 each and set up a $2 million scholarship fund for their descendants.

The rural Levy County town was once home to a prospering Black community before the white mob wiped it out and killed dozens of African Americans, some eyewitnesses claimed.

Fearing for their lives, the survivors fled their homes.

In 2008, Florida lawmakers passed a resolution formally expressing regret for the state’s “shameful” history of slavery but never issued an official apology, according to the Sun Sentinel.

Dr. Marvin Dunn, professor emeritus at Florida International University and longtime social justice activist, told the South Florida Times he agrees with Ingoglia’s bill to ban reparations for descendants of slavery.

Dunn, who bought land at the Rosewood massacre site to build a Black history memorial, said reparation funds for slavery should not go to individual African Americans but instead to institutions and public organizations that uplift the Black communities and HBCUs.

"Reparations money should provide permanent financial support for historically black colleges and universities," Dunn said. "Reparations money should go into schools and libraries that serve black communities, rural and urban and should be used to support scholarships for college and Professional Schools For African American students as well as for training in vocational and trade skills."

Dunn himself has been a target of hate crimes for decades, the most recent landing a white man in prison for his alleged racially motivated actions.

David Allen Emanuel, a 62-year-old white man, was sentenced to one year in prison in October after he was convicted of trying to run down Dunn, his son and four other Black men in 2022 when they were surveying the Rosewood massacre site for the memorial.

A federal judge accepted Dunn and the other men’s request for leniency when he sentenced Emanuel after a jury found him guilty on six counts of hate crimes.

"Reconciliation for past racial wrongs will never be reached if the goal is to provoke guilt in whites," said Dunn. "It will never be reached if the goal is to dismiss the wrongs of the past. Racial reconciliation will come when the goal of both whites and Blacks is mutual acceptance of each other, and of the past and its consequences."