Civil rights activist Ron Daniels, who grew up in Youngstown, was selected to serve on New York’s nine-member Community Commission on Reparations Remedies that will examine the legacy of slavery and the subsequent discrimination against people of African descent.

Daniels was one of three people appointed to the committee by Carl Heastie, speaker of the New York State Assembly and a Democrat. Gov. Kathy Hochul and Senate Majority Leader Andrea Stewart-Cousins, both Democrats, also appointed three members each to the commission that will recommend nonbinding ways to address slavery in the state and its long-term impacts.

Heastie said the commission will “take on the responsibility of examining our state’s history of slavery and how its legacy continues to impact the lives of black New Yorkers today. I look forward to their report as we remain committed to dismantling centuries of racial, economic and institutional injustices across our state.”

A bill creating the commission was signed into law by Hochul in December to look at New York’s history in slavery and the impact it has had on blacks since. The last enslaved people in New York were freed in 1827.

Daniels said the commission “catapults New York into the center of the surging U.S. and global reparations movement,” and that it “has the opportunity to educate the people of the state and the nation that the harms, the injuries inflicted on people of African (descent) through enslavement and its legacies were not just down south, they also occurred” in New York “where the wealth of the Empire State was built of enslaved labor.”

Daniels added: “Even after slavery was abolished, its harmful legacies persisted and persist right up until the present, hampering the full development of black people in this state. New York has the opportunity and obligation of leading the nation in repairing these injuries through the enactment of comprehensive reparations.”

Daniels moved to Youngstown when he was 4 years old and graduated in 1965 from Youngstown University (now Youngstown State University) with a bachelor’s degree in history. He also earned a master’s degree in political science from the Rockefeller School of Public Affairs in Albany, New York, and a doctorate of philosophy in Africana studies from the University of Cincinnati.

Daniels taught briefly at Youngstown University and then at several other schools. He is currently a distinguished lecturer emeritus at York College in New York.

While in Youngstown, Daniels founded Freedom Inc., an activist organization in the city, and ran in 1977 for mayor of the city.

Daniels was the executive director of the Center for Constitutional Rights and executive director of National Rainbow Coalition. Daniels worked on Jesse Jackson’s 1984 presidential campaign and served as deputy campaign manager of Jackson’s 1988 presidential campaign.

Daniels ran as the presidential candidate of the Peace and Freedom Party in 1992.

He is the longtime president of the Institute of the Black World 21st Century, a resource center to empower black organizations and communities, and is also administrator for the National African-American Reparations Commission, which fights for reparation justice, compensation and restoration of black communities.

California in 2020 was the first state to form a reparations commission. A report, released last June, included more than 115 recommendations for how the state should compensate those harmed by slavery and determined an eligible person could be owed about $1.2 million. The state hasn’t acted on the recommendations.