IV 
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; 
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Whereas to meet the international legal obligation of repara-
tions, the Federal Government must compensate descend-
ants of enslaved Black people and people of African de-
scent 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 pros-
ecute 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 incarcer-
ation and family separation, oppressive and abusive crim-
inalization, and the continued impact of embedded histor-
ical 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 maintain-
ing a violent racial hierarchy, embedding slavery and 
other methods of economic exploitation into the fabric of 
society, and emboldening White supremacy with legal, so-
cial, 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 
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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 rec-
ognized and fully accounted for; 
Whereas, over the course of nearly 300 years, at least 
12,500,000 Africans were kidnapped from their home-
lands by European traders and forcibly brought across 
the Atlantic Ocean in one of the largest forced displace-
ments 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 mem-
bers being transferred to the Caribbean, was a mur-
derous and tortuous reality for millions of enslaved peo-
ple who had to endure separation from loved ones they 
could no longer talk to or keep in contact with, perpet-
uating 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 Amer-
ican shores, marked the first year White Virginians pur-
chased 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 poli-
cies produced and sustained the institution of slavery, 
thus voluntarily accepting the British legacy of the insti-
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tution, and with it, the responsibility to provide repara-
tions; 
Whereas the Founders in drafting the Constitution preserved 
slavery and racialized social stratification through sys-
temic 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 arti-
cle 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 de-
humanization of the African by relegating their status to 
that of three-fifths of a White man, and article IV, sec-
tion 2, clause 3, which egregiously mandated the capture 
and return to enslavement of fugitives; 
Whereas the system of enslavement served to unite all Thir-
teen 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 peo-
ple from the Oval Office; 
Whereas enslaved Black people built the United States Cap-
itol and the White House; 
Whereas more than 1,700 United States Congressional Mem-
bers 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; 
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Whereas the Dred Scott v. Sanford legal ruling in 1857, 
which decided that enslaved Black people were not citi-
zens 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 cul-
tural practices and traditions from Africa; 
Whereas the most productive enslaved people were often 
whipped the most violently and were often used as breed-
ers to save slave owners from purchasing enslaved per-
sons; 
Whereas the ban on importation of Africans for enslavement 
was implemented in 1808, driving trade underground and 
increasing the numbers of enslaved people through child-
birth 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 per-
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sons 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 indis-
pensable 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 econ-
omy while suppressing self-determination and wealth- 
building for enslaved Black people, and postemancipation, 
left newly freed Black people with zero wealth and land-
less, 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 planta-
tions, insured enslaved people as collateral, produced the 
agricultural tools that were used in Southern plantations, 
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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, cre-
ating 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 peo-
ple, 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; 
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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 corro-
sive 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 rath-
er than capture them, and also enslaved Black war cap-
tives 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, Confed-
erate 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 abol-
ished slavery and indentured servitude, it made an excep-
tion 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 
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parishes increased by 286 percent between 1860 and 
1880; 
Whereas, following the Civil War, in 1865, Confederate vet-
erans founded the Ku Klux Klan, a group that would un-
leash 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 Eman-
cipation Act of 1862, while never addressing the need for 
restitution to enslaved Black people and their descend-
ants; 
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 for-
merly enslaved Black people in 1865, but was eventually 
looted and corrupted by White politicians and business-
men, resulting in its demise in 1872, and in more than 
60,000 Black people and organizations losing their depos-
its 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 ulti-
mately 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 
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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 com-
munity, Rosewood, Florida, in 1923, in addition to count-
less 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 oc-
curred from the end of the Civil War to the 1940s; 
Whereas Black voters and political candidates were intimi-
dated, 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 
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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 seg-
regation 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 sanc-
tified the continuation of slavery by another name; 
Whereas so unbearable were these Black Codes and the bru-
tality of Jim Crow, that 6,000,000 Black people were dis-
placed 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, result-
ing in the displacement of millions of Black people be-
tween 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 Migra-
tion’’ began to expose racial fault lines across the coun-
try; 
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 
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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 unem-
ployment 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 effec-
tively destroyed by Federal highways systems and the 
fraudulent use of eminent domain; 
Whereas the racist origins of the Federal Housing Adminis-
tration, subsequent discriminatory housing policies, cou-
pled with anti-Black business practices, conspired to con-
centrate wealth in White neighborhoods; 
Whereas, from the 1930s to the 1960s, Black people across 
the country were effectively barred from the home-mort-
gage market, thereby locking Black people out of the 
greatest opportunity for wealth accumulation in the his-
tory of the United States; 
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Whereas many States barred Black people from fully partici-
pating 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 vet-
erans with access to low-income home loans; 
Whereas this form of exclusion from Federal programs that 
provide economic and Social Security measures has con-
tinued 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 un-
constitutional, public schools serving Black students re-
main 
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 pas-
sage of Shelley v. Kraemer, striking down racial restric-
tive housing that prevented people of the ‘‘Negro or Mon-
golian Race’’ from purchasing homes; 
Whereas, in 1963, Governor George Wallace blocked Black 
students at the schoolhouse door of the University of Ala-
bama; 
Whereas mass protests erupted across the United States dur-
ing the civil rights era demanding an end to racial seg-
regation, 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; 
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Whereas the FBI established the Counterintelligence Pro-
gram, 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 dispari-
ties; 
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 prosecu-
tion of children as adults, and the disproportionate tar-
geting, stopping, and arresting of Black people by law en-
forcement; 
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 fel-
ony convictions; 
Whereas Black agricultural landowners have been dispos-
sessed from at least 90 percent of their land due to ra-
cially discriminatory practices by the Department of Ag-
riculture and private companies; 
Whereas Black communities bear the brunt of environmental 
racism and remain disproportionately impacted by ex-
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treme temperatures and environmental hazards due to 
the close proximity to places like chemical plants, oil re-
fineries, trash incinerators, construction sites, and waste 
dumping sites, as a result of lacking of greenery and tree 
canopies; 
Whereas Black women with children remain disproportion-
ately 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 commit-
ting 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, de-
spite being only 19 percent of preschoolers, make up 54 
percent of girls suspended from preschool, effectively fun-
neling 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 re-
sponsibility to adequately acknowledge and provide re-
dress for the crimes of enslavement and the continuation 
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of racial subjugation, and cannot absolve itself of its re-
sponsibility today; 
Whereas, under fundamental international human rights law, 
governments have an obligation to provide full and effec-
tive 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 depriva-
tion of fundamental human rights; 
Whereas the racial wealth gap is a direct legacy of chattel 
slavery in the United States and the continued displace-
ment, 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 ben-
efitted from 222,505,049 hours of forced labor between 
1619 and the end of slavery in 1865, which would be val-
ued 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 in-
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vestment 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, de-
nials of employment, predatory lending practices, and on-
going banking discrimination, as well as educational inad-
equacies, 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 de-
scendants 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 evo-
lutions, 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 con-
tinuous and holistic healing process; 
Whereas a holistic program for reparations must address the 
wealth extracted from our communities through environ-
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mental racism, slavery, food apartheid, housing discrimi-
nation, 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 mul-
tiple levels, and thus the establishment and implementa-
tion 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, in-
cluding Japanese Americans pursuant to the Civil Lib-
erties Act of 1988, who were forcibly removed and incar-
cerated in concentration camps in World War II; 
Whereas the Federal Government abdicated its responsibility 
time and time again to adequately acknowledge and pro-
vide redress for the crimes of enslavement and the con-
tinuation of racial subjugation and never enacted resolu-
tions 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 
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a people injured, because of their group identity, by gov-
ernments, corporations, institutions, and families; 
Whereas a holistic program for reparations must address the 
cultural and educational exploitation, erasure, and extrac-
tion 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 sup-
port, build, preserve, and restore cultural assets and sa-
cred 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 sig-
nificant cultural and historical sites; 
Whereas the Federal Government must recover and identify 
physical remains of victims of state-sanctioned racial vio-
lence 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’’, 
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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 tar-
geting 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 As-
sociation and the National Association of Black Owned 
Broadcasters to support the work of Black-led news pro-
grams, radio and television broadcasting dedicated to cul-
tural education, and civic engagement for the benefit of 
Black Americans; 
Whereas the Federal Government should provide free edu-
cation 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 edu-
cational programming that comprehensively and delib-
erately encourages the incorporation of lessons and cur-
ricula on slavery and its vestiges; 
Whereas the Federal Government must support Black farm-
ers 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, men-
tal health, and curative treatment services to Black com-
munities; 
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Whereas the Federal Government must support and strength-
en 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 com-
prehensive reparations; 
Whereas, in 2022, the United Nations Committee on Elimi-
nation of All Forms of Racial Discrimination rec-
ommended implementation of a Federal reparations com-
mission 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 proc-
esses have not only failed to bring complete justice, but 
have created new forms of harm; 
Whereas reparations are fundamentally a justice and ac-
countability 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 gen-
eral welfare, including routine social services and develop-
ment 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 Fed-
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eral 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 implemen-
tation of H.R. 40, the Commission to Study and De-
velop 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 encour-
ages the reintroduction and enactment of resolutions 
apologizing for slavery, without any limiting clauses; 
(5) acknowledges the significance of and mo-
mentum 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 
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demands arising from chattel slavery and its long-
standing impact on Black people; and 
(7) honors the lives and legacies of those named 
and unnamed whose lives were stolen by the institu-
tion of chattel slavery and other forms of state-sanc-
tioned violence in the United States. 
Æ 
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