Recognizing that the United States has a moral and legal obligation to provide reparations for the enslavement of Africans and its lasting harm on the lives of millions of Black people in the United States.

Subjects: Civil Rights and Liberties, Minority Issues


<html><body><pre>[Congressional Bills 118th Congress]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office]
[H. Res. 414 Introduced in House (IH)]

&lt;DOC&gt;






118th CONGRESS
  1st Session
H. RES. 414

Recognizing that the United States has a moral and legal obligation to 
  provide reparations for the enslavement of Africans and its lasting 
  harm on the lives of millions of Black people in the United States.


_______________________________________________________________________


                    IN THE HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES

                              May 17, 2023

Ms. Bush (for herself, Ms. Lee of California, Ms. Tlaib, Ms. Pressley, 
   Mr. Bowman, Mrs. Ramirez, Ms. Lee of Pennsylvania, Ms. Omar, Mr. 
 Jackson of Illinois, and Mr. Green of Texas) submitted the following 
    resolution; which was referred to the Committee on the Judiciary

_______________________________________________________________________

                               RESOLUTION


 
Recognizing that the United States has a moral and legal obligation to 
  provide reparations for the enslavement of Africans and its lasting 
  harm on the lives of millions of Black people in the United States.

Whereas Black people are, and have always been, human beings, yet the Federal 
        Government has historically failed to recognize our dignity and 
        humanity;
Whereas reparations are defined as a victim-centered process by which survivors 
        of atrocities and serious human rights violations, and their 
        descendants, have the right to seek restitution, compensation, 
        rehabilitation, satisfaction, and guarantees of nonrepetition for past 
        and ongoing harms;
Whereas to meet the international legal obligation of reparations, the Federal 
        Government must compensate descendants of enslaved Black people and 
        people of African descent in the United States to account for the harms 
        of chattel slavery, the cumulative damages of enslavement, and the 
        epochs of legal and de facto segregation;
Whereas the Federal Government is responsible for--

    (1) policies that led to the economic, political, and social erosion of 
Black communities;

    (2) failing to keep Black people safe from or actively sanctioning 
White domestic terrorism and failing to prosecute it when it occurred;

    (3) the impacts of government-imposed segregation leading to harmful 
health outcomes and environmental racism;

    (4) the ongoing harms of racialized mass incarceration and family 
separation, oppressive and abusive criminalization, and the continued 
impact of embedded historical harms of the criminal legal system on Black 
people and Black communities; and

    (5) banking, consumer, housing, health, education, and employment 
discrimination;

Whereas reparations must be administered by the Federal Government to 
        descendants of enslaved Black people and people of African descent for 
        sanctioning the kidnapping and trafficking of human beings, creating and 
        maintaining a violent racial hierarchy, embedding slavery and other 
        methods of economic exploitation into the fabric of society, and 
        emboldening White supremacy with legal, social, and economic tools of 
        control;
Whereas the full length of legalized slavery's impact on Black wealth creation 
        and well-being today, including the nearly 300 years of chattel slavery 
        from the year 1502, when enslaved Africans were brought to Hispaniola 
        and later their descendants brought to United States territory, to the 
        year 1789, when the first Congress met, must be recognized and fully 
        accounted for;
Whereas, over the course of nearly 300 years, at least 12,500,000 Africans were 
        kidnapped from their homelands by European traders and forcibly brought 
        across the Atlantic Ocean in one of the largest forced displacements in 
        human history, and at least 2,000,000 did not survive the horrifying, 
        brutal, and grueling journey across the Atlantic, also known as the 
        Middle Passage and Maafa;
Whereas forcibly separating Black families, often with members being transferred 
        to the Caribbean, was a murderous and tortuous reality for millions of 
        enslaved people who had to endure separation from loved ones they could 
        no longer talk to or keep in contact with, perpetuating deep 
        psychological and emotional trauma;
Whereas Spanish colonizers brought enslaved Africans to modern-day Florida in 
        1565;
Whereas 1619, a year before the Mayflower arrived on American shores, marked the 
        first year White Virginians purchased around 30 enslaved Angolans from 
        Portuguese traders who were forcefully transported through the trans-
        Atlantic slave trade, thereafter launching a violent system of racial 
        subjugation, exploitation, and genocide;
Whereas, from the Nation's founding in 1776, Federal policies produced and 
        sustained the institution of slavery, thus voluntarily accepting the 
        British legacy of the institution, and with it, the responsibility to 
        provide reparations;
Whereas the Founders in drafting the Constitution preserved slavery and 
        racialized social stratification through systemic measures, without 
        needing to explicitly mention harmful intent and racialized impacts;
Whereas the Founders and their contemporaries understood freedom and liberty in 
        direct relation to enslaved people and in their capacity to enslave 
        Black people;
Whereas the trade in and chattelization of human beings is referenced in 3 
        sections of the Constitution, namely article I, section 9, clause 1, 
        which expressly sanctioned the continuation of the international slave 
        trade for 20 years, article I, section 2, clause 3, which upheld the 
        further dehumanization of the African by relegating their status to that 
        of three-fifths of a White man, and article IV, section 2, clause 3, 
        which egregiously mandated the capture and return to enslavement of 
        fugitives;
Whereas the system of enslavement served to unite all Thirteen Colonies under 
        the banner of White supremacy;
Whereas, of the Nation's first 12 Presidents, 10 enslaved Black people;
Whereas President James K. Polk traded enslaved Black people from the Oval 
        Office;
Whereas enslaved Black people built the United States Capitol and the White 
        House;
Whereas more than 1,700 United States Congressional Members who served in the 
        18th, 19th, and 20th centuries had enslaved Black people, including the 
        first woman elected to the United States Senate, Senator Rebecca Latimer 
        Felton;
Whereas the Dred Scott v. Sanford legal ruling in 1857, which decided that 
        enslaved Black people were not citizens of the United States under 
        article III, was decided by 5 slaveholding Supreme Court Justices, 
        including Chief Justice Roger B. Taney and Associate Justices John 
        Campbell, John Catron, Peter Daniel, and James Moore Wayne;
Whereas the horrors of chattel slavery are immeasurable and have led to 
        generational trauma for millions of Black people;
Whereas enslaved people were prohibited and denied the right to maintain their 
        indigenous languages, faiths, and cultural practices and traditions from 
        Africa;
Whereas the most productive enslaved people were often whipped the most 
        violently and were often used as breeders to save slave owners from 
        purchasing enslaved persons;
Whereas the ban on importation of Africans for enslavement was implemented in 
        1808, driving trade underground and increasing the numbers of enslaved 
        people through childbirth as the sole method available;
Whereas millions of enslaved Black women were routinely raped, sexually 
        assaulted, and tortured at the hands of their White enslavers, and 
        others were purchased and forced to staff brothels, all of which 
        reinforced White male dominance and gender hierarchy;
Whereas the rape of enslaved Black women grew so routine that some have 
        calculated that over 60 percent of enslaved women and girls experienced 
        sexual coercion and rape in their lives, and that 1 out of every 6 Black 
        persons born into captivity in 1860 was born as a byproduct of the rape 
        of a young, teenage, enslaved girl;
Whereas infant mortality rates on plantations were incredibly high, and in the 
        South, 50 percent of enslaved infants were stillborn or died within the 
        first year of life in the early 1800s;
Whereas the enslavement of Black people became an indispensable economic driver 
        in the United States, allowing White Americans in both the South and the 
        North to enjoy the profit of unpaid and dehumanizing labor;
Whereas the enslavement of Black people and the country's commitment to using 
        unflinching violence and oppression created an endless supply of labor-
        enriched White slave-owners and their descendants, fueled the country's 
        economy while suppressing self-determination and wealth-building for 
        enslaved Black people, and postemancipation, left newly freed Black 
        people with zero wealth and landless, with a lack of education, poor 
        health, and severed family and homeland ties;
Whereas the economy of the United States was founded on the production of 
        tobacco, rice, sugar, and cotton, all of which were planted, harvested, 
        and produced by enslaved Black people;
Whereas the economy of the United States, in both the North and South, 
        flourished as a result of Black trafficking, torture, and exploitation;
Whereas, while New York began to abolish slavery in 1799, New Yorkers invested 
        heavily in the Southern plantations, insured enslaved people as 
        collateral, produced the agricultural tools that were used in Southern 
        plantations, and funded the building of ships that were used to traffic 
        enslaved people;
Whereas, by 1831, the United States was delivering nearly half the world's raw 
        cotton crop as a result of chattel slavery;
Whereas, from 1801 to 1862, the amount of cotton picked daily by an enslaved 
        person increased by 400 percent;
Whereas cotton produced by enslaved people accelerated worldwide commercial 
        markets in the 19th century, creating demand for innovative contracts, 
        novel financial products, and modern forms of insurance and credit that 
        will define financial markets for centuries to come;
Whereas, in 1861, the value placed on cotton produced by enslaved Black people 
        was $250,000,000, or more than $8,200,000,000 today;
Whereas the bodies of enslaved people, gorged and congealed in the name of White 
        supremacist hate, became the single largest financial asset of property 
        in the United States that were purchased through loans, repaid with 
        interest, and insured with exorbitant policies;
Whereas the vending, bartering, and selling of enslaved people, and with it the 
        forced separation of Black families, became a self-sustaining economy 
        bringing in trillions of dollars across the United States;
Whereas White slaveowners used enslaved people as partial to full collateral in 
        8 out of 10 loans to access more wealth and resources, often to purchase 
        more enslaved people;
Whereas enslaved people themselves became commodities that, by 1860, were valued 
        at over $4,000,000,000;
Whereas, in 1857, in the Dred Scott v. Sanford decision, the Supreme Court held 
        that Black people were not citizens of the United States, and therefore, 
        had no rights to be respected, thereby further codifying White supremacy 
        into law;
Whereas the institution of slavery was so powerful and corrosive that it helped 
        to both create the wealth of the United States, and also threatened to 
        entirely destroy the fabric of the Union during the Civil War;
Whereas 78 percent of military-age free Black men served in the Union Army, and 
        200,000 Black men enlisted in the Union to fight during the Civil War, 
        accounting for 1 in 10 Union soldiers;
Whereas Confederate soldiers often killed Black soldiers rather than capture 
        them, and also enslaved Black war captives during the Civil War;
Whereas President Abraham Lincoln signed the Homestead Act in 1862, which by 
        1934, when the Act ended, had granted more than 270,000,000 acres of 
        land in the West to White people virtually for free;
Whereas, even after the Emancipation Proclamation, Confederate States ignored 
        Lincoln's emancipation order and maintained the institution of slavery;
Whereas slavery did not legally end until 1865, with the close of the Civil War;
Whereas, while the 13th Amendment is known to have abolished slavery and 
        indentured servitude, it made an exception for those convicted of 
        crimes;
Whereas, rather than shrinking after the technical abolition of slavery, 
        Southern plantations increased in size, as for example, the number of 
        Louisiana plantations in selected parishes increased by 286 percent 
        between 1860 and 1880;
Whereas, following the Civil War, in 1865, Confederate veterans founded the Ku 
        Klux Klan, a group that would unleash genocidal violence and a reign of 
        terror across the country for decades to come;
Whereas the Federal Government provided reparations to White slaveowners in the 
        District of Columbia for the loss of human property through the 
        Compensated Emancipation Act of 1862, while never addressing the need 
        for restitution to enslaved Black people and their descendants;
Whereas the Bureau of Refugees, Freedmen, and Abandoned Lands Bureau, also known 
        as the Freedmen's Bureau, was established to provide economic and social 
        aid to formerly enslaved Black people in 1865, but was eventually looted 
        and corrupted by White politicians and businessmen, resulting in its 
        demise in 1872, and in more than 60,000 Black people and organizations 
        losing their deposits and having to wait years for only a fraction of 
        them to be returned;
Whereas, Callie House, a formerly enslaved Black woman, alongside Reverend 
        Isaiah Dickerson, founded the Ex-Slave Mutual Relief, Bounty and Pension 
        Association in 1898, in a mass effort to pass Federal pension 
        legislation for formerly enslaved people, and whose efforts were 
        ultimately shut down by Federal agencies;
Whereas an estimated 6,500 racial terror lynchings took place between 1865 and 
        1950;
Whereas, in a series of outbreaks of race-related violence, an estimated 39 to 
        150 Black people were murdered in 1917 in the East St. Louis ``Riots'' 
        and another 6,000 were left homeless;
Whereas the East St. Louis ``Riots'' has been described as the ``worst case of 
        labor-related violence in 20th-century American history'';
Whereas more than 200 Black people were killed and another 6,000 were left 
        homeless during the 1919 attack and lynching in Moberly, Missouri, 
        costing $400,000 ($8,460,000 in 2022) in property damage;
Whereas White supremacists, deputized by Tulsa officials, raided, mobbed, 
        massacred, and completely burned down nearly 40 city blocks of Tulsa's 
        Greenwood District, a self-sustaining Black economy, also known as 
        ``Black Wall Street'', in 1921;
Whereas White supremacists raided, mobbed, massacred, and completely burned down 
        a small but thriving Black community, Rosewood, Florida, in 1923, in 
        addition to countless other Black communities across the United States;
Whereas the massacres in Tulsa and Rosewood were only 2 of more than 100 White 
        supremacist massacres that occurred from the end of the Civil War to the 
        1940s;
Whereas Black voters and political candidates were intimidated, harassed, 
        violently suppressed, and sometimes murdered for simply exercising their 
        constitutional right to vote;
Whereas participation of Black voters in electoral processes were routinely 
        suppressed by poll taxes and literacy tests to preserve White supremacy;
Whereas the Supreme Court codified the ``separate but equal'' doctrine in Plessy 
        v. Ferguson in 1896, thereby allowing racial segregation laws to exist 
        and enshrining a racial caste system in the United States;
Whereas not only were enslaved people never granted any form of compensation 
        after the abolition of slavery, they were thrust into a near-century-
        long epoch of legal segregation through Jim Crow laws;
Whereas, after emancipation, laws that governed slavery were retooled into Black 
        Codes to control free Black people, thereby establishing a criminal 
        legal system that sanctified the continuation of slavery by another 
        name;
Whereas so unbearable were these Black Codes and the brutality of Jim Crow, that 
        6,000,000 Black people were displaced and forced to migrate to the North 
        seeking some form of safety and political asylum within the border of 
        their own country during ``The Great Migration'', also known as ``The 
        Great Displacement'';
Whereas the Federal Government abdicated its responsibility to protect its own 
        citizens from relentless violence, resulting in the displacement of 
        millions of Black people between 1916 and 1970, many of whom were 
        refugees from White supremacist violence;
Whereas, from Mississippi to Minnesota, States began to criminalize any form of 
        resistance to racial hierarchies and expand their criminal codes as 
        ``The Great Migration'' began to expose racial fault lines across the 
        country;
Whereas medical experimentation on Black people without their consent, including 
        forced gynecological experiments on enslaved Black women and the 
        Government-sponsored Tuskegee Syphilis Experiment on Black men, led to 
        major medical discoveries, at the full expense of Black people's 
        humanity, dignity, and rights;
Whereas, at the end of World War I, Black veterans returned to their homes and 
        were assaulted for daring to wear the United States uniform;
Whereas Black people were intentionally and systematically excluded from Federal 
        social service programs;
Whereas, despite being disproportionately affected by unemployment during the 
        Great Depression, Black people were largely excluded from New Deal 
        programs;
Whereas Black people were excluded from the Social Security and Wagner Acts of 
        1935 and the Fair Labor Standards Act of 1938;
Whereas 65 percent of Black people nationally and 70 to 80 percent of Black 
        people in the South were ineligible for Social Security when it was 
        signed into law by President Roosevelt in 1935;
Whereas Black neighborhoods have been divided and effectively destroyed by 
        Federal highways systems and the fraudulent use of eminent domain;
Whereas the racist origins of the Federal Housing Administration, subsequent 
        discriminatory housing policies, coupled with anti-Black business 
        practices, conspired to concentrate wealth in White neighborhoods;
Whereas, from the 1930s to the 1960s, Black people across the country were 
        effectively barred from the home-mortgage market, thereby locking Black 
        people out of the greatest opportunity for wealth accumulation in the 
        history of the United States;
Whereas many States barred Black people from fully participating in the Aid to 
        Dependent Children Program;
Whereas Black veterans were disqualified from receiving title III benefits of 
        the G.I. Bill, benefits which provided veterans with access to low-
        income home loans;
Whereas this form of exclusion from Federal programs that provide economic and 
        Social Security measures has continued well into the 21st century;
Whereas, well into the 1960s, Black people in the Deep South were unaware they 
        were freed and forced to work, violently tortured, and raped;
Whereas, despite the historic Brown v. Board of Education ruling deeming racial 
        segregation in public schools as unconstitutional, public schools 
        serving Black students remain inherently separate and unequal, receiving 
        $23,000,000,000 less in school funding;
Whereas, in 1948, Missouri was a catalyst in securing equal housing for Black 
        people across the country with the passage of Shelley v. Kraemer, 
        striking down racial restrictive housing that prevented people of the 
        ``Negro or Mongolian Race'' from purchasing homes;
Whereas, in 1963, Governor George Wallace blocked Black students at the 
        schoolhouse door of the University of Alabama;
Whereas mass protests erupted across the United States during the civil rights 
        era demanding an end to racial segregation, disenfranchisement, and 
        institutionalized racism that resulted in the passage of the Civil 
        Rights Acts of 1964 and 1968, the Voting Rights Act of 1965, and the end 
        of legalized school segregation;
Whereas the FBI established the Counterintelligence Program, also known as 
        COINTELPRO, in 1956, with one of its major goals to target Black 
        activists fighting for self-determination, reparations, and racial 
        justice;
Whereas, in 1985, the Philadelphia Police Department dropped a bomb laced with 
        Tovex and C-4 explosives on the MOVE organization, a Black liberation 
        organization, who were living in a West Philadelphia rowhome leaving 11 
        dead, including 5 children;
Whereas, while the United States was founded based on Black plunder, it has yet 
        to acknowledge, reconcile, and provide adequate redress for the 
        sanctioned system of slavery and its vestiges resulting in modern-day 
        disparities;
Whereas Black people are still presumed dangerous and therefore are 
        systematically targeted and criminalized under our legal system, 
        including through the war on drugs, mandatory minimum sentencing laws, 
        the prosecution of children as adults, and the disproportionate 
        targeting, stopping, and arresting of Black people by law enforcement;
Whereas 1 in 16 Black people of voting age is barred from actively participating 
        in the democracy of the United States, including through 
        disenfranchisement due to felony convictions;
Whereas Black agricultural landowners have been dispossessed from at least 90 
        percent of their land due to racially discriminatory practices by the 
        Department of Agriculture and private companies;
Whereas Black communities bear the brunt of environmental racism and remain 
        disproportionately impacted by extreme temperatures and environmental 
        hazards due to the close proximity to places like chemical plants, oil 
        refineries, trash incinerators, construction sites, and waste dumping 
        sites, as a result of lacking of greenery and tree canopies;
Whereas Black women with children remain disproportionately barred from 
        accessing the Temporary Assistance for Needy Families program;
Whereas, while the legacy of slavery still affects our society today, it is 
        rarely taught comprehensively in our school systems;
Whereas the school systems of the United States are committing educational 
        malpractice by treating this country's history of slavery and racial 
        hierarchy as an aberration;
Whereas, since January 2021, over 44 States have proposed legislation or taken 
        other steps to ban teaching of the ways in which racism has shaped the 
        law and way of life in the United States, and 18 States have already 
        imposed bans;
Whereas Black students are suspended from school at a rate 4 times greater than 
        White students, and Black girls, despite being only 19 percent of 
        preschoolers, make up 54 percent of girls suspended from preschool, 
        effectively funneling Black children into the school-to-prison pipeline;
Whereas the legacy of racialized barriers to education is still so prevalent 
        today, that Black women graduate from a 4-year degree with 60 percent 
        more debt than their White male peers;
Whereas the Federal Government repeatedly abdicated its responsibility to 
        adequately acknowledge and provide redress for the crimes of enslavement 
        and the continuation of racial subjugation, and cannot absolve itself of 
        its responsibility today;
Whereas, under fundamental international human rights law, governments have an 
        obligation to provide full and effective remedies for violations of 
        human rights, including acts of racial discrimination, and victims of 
        human rights violations have the right to pursue such remedies;
Whereas Black people are often funneled into some of the most difficult jobs 
        with lower wages, and continue to be targets of wage and land theft, 
        exploitation, and deprivation of fundamental human rights;
Whereas the racial wealth gap is a direct legacy of chattel slavery in the 
        United States and the continued displacement, exploitation, and 
        sanctioned theft of formerly enslaved Black people and their 
        descendants;
Whereas the Federal Government must eliminate the Black-White racial wealth gap 
        as it is a direct legacy of chattel slavery and the cumulative impact of 
        legal and de facto segregation that followed;
Whereas financial reparations must be paid by the Federal Government for an 
        amount that respected economists have estimated totals, at minimum, 
        $14,000,000,000,000 to eliminate the racial wealth gap that currently 
        exists between Black and White Americans;
Whereas scholars have estimated that the United States benefitted from 
        222,505,049 hours of forced labor between 1619 and the end of slavery in 
        1865, which would be valued at $97,000,000,000,000 today;
Whereas if the United States closed racial gaps for Black people in the areas of 
        housing, education, wages, and investment 20 years ago, 
        $16,000,000,000,000 could have been added to the economy;
Whereas the damage experienced by Black people stemming from enslavement and its 
        evolutions is not confined solely to economics or the racial wealth gap, 
        and should take in account centuries of forced labor postenslavement, 
        denials of employment, predatory lending practices, and ongoing banking 
        discrimination, as well as educational inadequacies, health disparities, 
        cultural degradation, and the criminal punishment system;
Whereas the Federal Government must formally apologize for the state-sanctioned 
        institution of chattel slavery and subsequent anti-Black institutions, 
        laws, and practices;
Whereas reparations call for the interrogation, overhauling, and end of abusive 
        Federal institutions that continue to inflict unjustifiable harms on 
        Black people today;
Whereas the Federal Government must compensate the descendants of enslaved Black 
        people and people of African descent in the form of direct monetary 
        reparations for the harms and vestiges of chattel slavery and its 
        evolutions, as well as with other targeted benefits;
Whereas the Federal Government must return, restore, or provide adequate remedy 
        for property unjustly stolen from Black families through the use of 
        racially restrictive covenants and eminent domain;
Whereas the Federal Government must pay its debt, in all necessary forms, to 
        descendants of enslaved Black people and people of African descent in 
        order to support a continuous and holistic healing process;
Whereas a holistic program for reparations must address the wealth extracted 
        from our communities through environmental racism, slavery, food 
        apartheid, housing discrimination, and racialized capitalism in the form 
        of corporate and government reparations focused on healing ongoing 
        physical and mental trauma, and ensuring access to and control of food 
        sources, housing, and land;
Whereas a comprehensive reparations program must include rehabilitative measures 
        such as trauma-informed care to address inheritance of historical and 
        intergenerational traumas;
Whereas the historical and present systemic harms stemming from slavery are 
        multifaceted and were inflicted at multiple levels, and thus the 
        establishment and implementation of reparations can never truly restore 
        the physical, psychological, and cultural damage done, however, as a 
        form of redress, it can address harms and cumulative damages;
Whereas the Federal Government has provided compensation and other forms of 
        redress to other communities against which it has committed gross human 
        rights violations, including Japanese Americans pursuant to the Civil 
        Liberties Act of 1988, who were forcibly removed and incarcerated in 
        concentration camps in World War II;
Whereas the Federal Government abdicated its responsibility time and time again 
        to adequately acknowledge and provide redress for the crimes of 
        enslavement and the continuation of racial subjugation and never enacted 
        resolutions formally apologizing for slavery or H.R. 40, the Commission 
        to Study and Develop Reparation Proposals for African Americans Act;
Whereas the Federal Government must engage in a holistic reparations process of 
        repair, healing, and restoration of a people injured, because of their 
        group identity, by governments, corporations, institutions, and 
        families;
Whereas a holistic program for reparations must address the cultural and 
        educational exploitation, erasure, and extraction of Black communities 
        by establishing public school curricula that critically examine the 
        political, economic, and social impacts of chattel and slavery, Jim 
        Crow, and post Jim Crow era discrimination and funding to support, 
        build, preserve, and restore cultural assets and sacred sites to ensure 
        the recognition and honoring of our collective struggles and triumphs;
Whereas the Federal Government via the National Parks Services must seek to 
        erect markers on every site where a Black person was lynched, a massacre 
        of Black people was committed, and Black towns or neighborhoods were 
        destroyed;
Whereas the Federal Government must restore and preserve African burial grounds, 
        Black cemeteries, and other significant cultural and historical sites;
Whereas the Federal Government must recover and identify physical remains of 
        victims of state-sanctioned racial violence and help resource proper 
        burial of remains at the direction of connected family and community 
        members;
Whereas the Federal Government must restore the voting rights of all formerly 
        and currently incarcerated persons;
Whereas the Federal Government must amend the 13th Amendment to the 
        Constitution, which formally abolished slavery, to repeal the punishment 
        clause, which reads ``except as a punishment for crime whereof the party 
        shall have been duly convicted, shall exist within the United States, or 
        any place subject to their jurisdiction'', which implies that Black 
        people convicted of crimes can be legally held in bondage;
Whereas the Federal Government must exonerate Marcus Mosiah Garvey and Callie 
        House for their unjust targeting and imprisonment, and the President 
        should issue a posthumous pardon to them;
Whereas the Federal Government should establish targeted funds to be 
        administered by the National Publishers Association and the National 
        Association of Black Owned Broadcasters to support the work of Black-led 
        news programs, radio and television broadcasting dedicated to cultural 
        education, and civic engagement for the benefit of Black Americans;
Whereas the Federal Government should provide free education to students 
        attending historically Black colleges and universities, who are 
        committed to serving Black communities, provide monetary incentives to 
        local school districts that adopt and implement a curriculum on the 
        history of people of African descent, and ensure that the Department of 
        Education provides and supports educational programming that 
        comprehensively and deliberately encourages the incorporation of lessons 
        and curricula on slavery and its vestiges;
Whereas the Federal Government must support Black farmers and enable them to 
        seek adequate judicial remedies, as well as expand and compete in the 
        United States and global economy;
Whereas the Federal Government must institutionalize and support culturally 
        appropriate, holistic, preventive, mental health, and curative treatment 
        services to Black communities;
Whereas the Federal Government must support and strengthen community-based 
        infrastructure such as hospitals and medical facilities that specialize 
        in services for Black communities;
Whereas, in 2021, the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights urged 
        the United States to end anti-Black racial discrimination, violence and 
        systemic racism against people of African descent by providing 
        comprehensive reparations;
Whereas, in 2022, the United Nations Committee on Elimination of All Forms of 
        Racial Discrimination recommended implementation of a Federal 
        reparations commission to develop reparation proposals as key strategy 
        for achieving racial justice;
Whereas, in other countries, including South Africa, Canada, Colombia, and 
        others, poorly designed reparations processes have not only failed to 
        bring complete justice, but have created new forms of harm;
Whereas reparations are fundamentally a justice and accountability process that 
        should carry more symbolic and practical power than traditional social 
        policy; and
Whereas reparations programs should be distinguishable from the Federal 
        Government's responsibility for people's general welfare, including 
        routine social services and development aid: Now, therefore, be it
    Resolved, That the House of Representatives--
            (1) recognizes the responsibility of the Federal Government 
        to provide reparations, in all necessary forms, including 
        financial compensation, to rectify ongoing harms resulting from 
        violations, by the Federal Government, of Black people's human 
        right to self-determination and freedom from discrimination, 
        including with respect to housing, health, education, life, 
        security of person, water and sanitation, and a healthy 
        environment;
            (2) encourages support, passage and implementation of H.R. 
        40, the Commission to Study and Develop Reparation Proposals 
        for African-Americans Act, which has been introduced every year 
        since 1989, via Congress or the executive branch;
            (3) encourages the reintroduction, passage, and 
        implementation of legislation establishing the United States 
        Commission on Truth, Racial Healing, and Transformation;
            (4) acknowledges and apologizes for the state-sanctioned 
        institution of chattel slavery, and encourages the 
        reintroduction and enactment of resolutions apologizing for 
        slavery, without any limiting clauses;
            (5) acknowledges the significance of and momentum brought 
        by legacy organizations as well as additional grassroots and 
        national organizations leading the modern-day reparations 
        movement;
            (6) encourages the creation of local, State, and Federal 
        initiatives to identify sources of reparations demands arising 
        from chattel slavery and its longstanding impact on Black 
        people; and
            (7) honors the lives and legacies of those named and 
        unnamed whose lives were stolen by the institution of chattel 
        slavery and other forms of state-sanctioned violence in the 
        United States.
                                 &lt;all&gt;
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