•HRES 414 IH 
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 
VerDate Sep 11 2014 
02:09 Aug 15, 2025
Jkt 059200
PO 00000
Frm 00009
Fmt 6652
Sfmt 6300
E:\BILLS\HR414.IH
HR414
kjohnson on DSK7ZCZBW3PROD with $$_JOB
•HRES 414 IH 
in the East St. Louis ‘‘Riots’’ and another 6,000 were 
left homeless; 
Whereas the East St. Louis ‘‘Riots’’ has been described as 
the ‘‘worst case of labor-related violence in 20th-century 
American history’’; 
Whereas more than 200 Black people were killed and another 
6,000 were left homeless during the 1919 attack and 
lynching 
in 
Moberly, 
Missouri, 
costing 
$400,000 
($8,460,000 in 2022) in property damage; 
Whereas White supremacists, deputized by Tulsa officials, 
raided, mobbed, massacred, and completely burned down 
nearly 40 city blocks of Tulsa’s Greenwood District, a 
self-sustaining Black economy, also known as ‘‘Black 
Wall Street’’, in 1921; 
Whereas the Tulsa Race Massacre is the most documented 
race massacre in the history of the United States, and 
yet the 2 known living survivors, Lessie Benningfield 
Randle and Viola Ford Fletcher, both over 100 years of 
age, as well as descendants of the massacre have yet to 
receive comprehensive reparations and justice; 
Whereas White supremacists raided, mobbed, massacred, and 
completely burned down a small but thriving Black com-
munity, Rosewood, Florida, in 1923, in addition to count-
less other Black communities across the United States; 
Whereas the massacres in Tulsa and Rosewood were only 2 
of more than 100 documented White domestic terrorist 
attacks on Black communities that occurred from the end 
of the Civil War to the 1940s; 
Whereas Black voters and political candidates were intimi-
dated, harassed, violently suppressed, and sometimes 
VerDate Sep 11 2014 
02:09 Aug 15, 2025
Jkt 059200
PO 00000
Frm 00010
Fmt 6652
Sfmt 6300
E:\BILLS\HR414.IH
HR414
kjohnson on DSK7ZCZBW3PROD with $$_JOB
•HRES 414 IH 
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 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-
VerDate Sep 11 2014 
02:09 Aug 15, 2025
Jkt 059200
PO 00000
Frm 00011
Fmt 6652
Sfmt 6300
E:\BILLS\HR414.IH
HR414
kjohnson on DSK7ZCZBW3PROD with $$_JOB
•HRES 414 IH 
tion’’ began to expose racial fault lines across the coun-
try; 
Whereas medical experimentation on Black people without 
their consent, including forced gynecological experiments 
on enslaved Black women and the Government-sponsored 
Tuskegee Syphilis Experiment on Black men, led to 
major medical discoveries, at the full expense of Black 
people’s humanity, dignity, and rights; 
Whereas, at the end of World War I, Black veterans returned 
to their homes and were assaulted for daring to wear the 
United States uniform; 
Whereas Black people were intentionally and systematically 
excluded from Federal social service programs; 
Whereas, despite being disproportionately affected by unem-
ployment during the Great Depression, Black people were 
largely excluded from New Deal programs; 
Whereas Black people were excluded from the Social Security 
and Wagner Acts of 1935 and the Fair Labor Standards 
Act of 1938; 
Whereas 65 percent of Black people nationally and 70 to 80 
percent of Black people in the South were ineligible for 
Social Security when it was signed into law by President 
Roosevelt in 1935; 
Whereas Black neighborhoods have been divided and effec-
tively destroyed by Federal highways systems and the 
fraudulent use of eminent domain; 
Whereas the racist origins of the Federal Housing Adminis-
tration, subsequent discriminatory housing policies, cou-
pled with anti-Black business practices, conspired to con-
centrate wealth in White neighborhoods; 
VerDate Sep 11 2014 
02:09 Aug 15, 2025
Jkt 059200
PO 00000
Frm 00012
Fmt 6652
Sfmt 6300
E:\BILLS\HR414.IH
HR414
kjohnson on DSK7ZCZBW3PROD with $$_JOB
•HRES 414 IH 
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; 
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 the Federal Bureau of Investigation established the 
Counterintelligence 
Program, 
also 
known 
as 
COINTELPRO, in 1956, with one of its major goals to 
target Black activists fighting for self-determination, rep-
arations, and racial justice; 
VerDate Sep 11 2014 
02:09 Aug 15, 2025
Jkt 059200
PO 00000
Frm 00013
Fmt 6652
Sfmt 6300
E:\BILLS\HR414.IH
HR414
kjohnson on DSK7ZCZBW3PROD with $$_JOB
•HRES 414 IH 
Whereas, in 1955, over 8,000 residents and over 400 busi-
nesses were displaced in the Lower Hill District, known 
as an epicenter of Black life and culture in Pittsburgh, 
Pennsylvania; 
Whereas, in 1963, Governor George Wallace blocked Black 
students at the schoolhouse door of the University of Ala-
bama; 
Whereas mass protests erupted across the United States dur-
ing the civil rights era demanding an end to racial seg-
regation, disenfranchisement, and institutionalized racism 
that resulted in the passage of the Civil Rights Acts of 
1964 and 1968, the Voting Rights Act of 1965, and the 
end of legalized school segregation; 
Whereas, in 1985, the Philadelphia Police Department 
dropped a bomb laced with Tovex and C–4 explosives on 
the MOVE organization, a Black liberation organization, 
who were living in a West Philadelphia rowhome leaving 
11 dead, including 5 children; 
Whereas, in Pittsburgh, infant mortality for Black babies is 
more than 6 times higher than that of White babies; 
Whereas, despite making up only 30 percent of the State of 
Maryland’s population, Black residents make up 71 per-
cent of the incarcerated population in the State, the high-
est percentage in the country; 
Whereas, while the United States was founded based on 
Black plunder, it has yet to acknowledge, reconcile, and 
provide adequate redress for the sanctioned system of 
slavery and its vestiges resulting in modern-day dispari-
ties; 
Whereas Black people are still presumed dangerous and 
therefore are systematically targeted and criminalized 
VerDate Sep 11 2014 
02:09 Aug 15, 2025
Jkt 059200
PO 00000
Frm 00014
Fmt 6652
Sfmt 6300
E:\BILLS\HR414.IH
HR414
kjohnson on DSK7ZCZBW3PROD with $$_JOB
•HRES 414 IH 
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 22 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-
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 
VerDate Sep 11 2014 
02:09 Aug 15, 2025
Jkt 059200
PO 00000
Frm 00015
Fmt 6652
Sfmt 6300
E:\BILLS\HR414.IH
HR414
kjohnson on DSK7ZCZBW3PROD with $$_JOB
•HRES 414 IH 
ways in which racism has shaped the law and way of life 
in the United States, and 18 States have already imposed 
bans; 
Whereas Black students are suspended from school at a rate 
4 times greater than White students, and Black girls, de-
spite being only 15 percent of students in public schools, 
make up 45 percent of out-of-school suspensions, 3 per-
cent of in-school suspensions, and 43 percent of expul-
sions, effectively funneling Black children into the school- 
to-prison pipeline; 
Whereas the legacy of racialized barriers to education is still 
so prevalent today, that Black women graduate from a 4- 
year degree with 60 percent more debt than their White 
male peers; 
Whereas Black homeowners face inequities within the tax-
ation system and housing market, taking on unfair tax 
burdens and biased appraisals thwarting Black wealth 
and Black homeownership; 
Whereas the Federal Government repeatedly abdicated its re-
sponsibility to adequately acknowledge and provide re-
dress for the crimes of enslavement and the continuation 
of racial subjugation, and cannot absolve itself of its re-
sponsibility today; 
Whereas, under fundamental international human rights law, 
governments have an obligation to provide full and effec-
tive remedies for violations of human rights, including 
acts of racial discrimination, and victims of human rights 
violations have the right to pursue such remedies; 
Whereas Black people are often funneled into some of the 
most difficult jobs with lower wages, and continue to be 
VerDate Sep 11 2014 
02:09 Aug 15, 2025
Jkt 059200
PO 00000
Frm 00016
Fmt 6652
Sfmt 6300
E:\BILLS\HR414.IH
HR414
kjohnson on DSK7ZCZBW3PROD with $$_JOB
•HRES 414 IH 
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, $16,000,000,000,000 
to eliminate the racial wealth gap that currently exists 
between Black and White Americans; 
Whereas scholars have estimated that the United States ben-
efited 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-
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 post-enslavement, 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; 
VerDate Sep 11 2014 
02:09 Aug 15, 2025
Jkt 059200
PO 00000
Frm 00017
Fmt 6652
Sfmt 6300
E:\BILLS\HR414.IH
HR414
kjohnson on DSK7ZCZBW3PROD with $$_JOB
•HRES 414 IH 
Whereas the Federal Government must formally apologize for 
the state-sanctioned institution of chattel slavery and 
subsequent anti-Black institutions, laws, and practices; 
Whereas reparations call for the interrogation, overhauling, 
and end of abusive Federal institutions that continue to 
inflict unjustifiable harms on Black people today; 
Whereas the Federal Government must compensate the de-
scendants of enslaved Black people and people of African 
descent in the form of direct monetary reparations for 
the harms and vestiges of chattel slavery and its evo-
lutions, as well as with other targeted benefits; 
Whereas the Federal Government must return, restore, or 
provide adequate remedy for property unjustly stolen 
from Black families through the use of racially restrictive 
covenants and eminent domain; 
Whereas the Federal Government must pay its debt, in all 
necessary forms, to descendants of enslaved Black people 
and people of African descent in order to support a con-
tinuous and holistic healing process; 
Whereas a holistic program for reparations must address the 
wealth extracted from our communities through environ-
mental racism, slavery, food apartheid, housing discrimi-
nation, and racialized capitalism in the form of corporate 
and government reparations focused on healing ongoing 
physical and mental trauma, and ensuring access to and 
control of food sources, housing, and land; 
Whereas a comprehensive reparations program must include 
funding and infrastructure for rehabilitative measures 
such as trauma-informed care to address inheritance of 
historical and intergenerational traumas; 
VerDate Sep 11 2014 
02:09 Aug 15, 2025
Jkt 059200
PO 00000
Frm 00018
Fmt 6652
Sfmt 6300
E:\BILLS\HR414.IH
HR414
kjohnson on DSK7ZCZBW3PROD with $$_JOB
•HRES 414 IH 
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 
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-
VerDate Sep 11 2014 
02:09 Aug 15, 2025
Jkt 059200
PO 00000
Frm 00019
Fmt 6652
Sfmt 6300
E:\BILLS\HR414.IH
HR414
kjohnson on DSK7ZCZBW3PROD with $$_JOB
•HRES 414 IH 
cred sites to ensure the recognition and honoring of our 
collective struggles and triumphs; 
Whereas the Federal Government via the National Parks 
Services must seek to erect markers on every site where 
a Black person was lynched, a massacre of Black people 
was committed, and Black towns or neighborhoods were 
destroyed; 
Whereas the Federal Government must restore and preserve 
African burial grounds, Black cemeteries, and other sig-
nificant cultural and historical sites; 
Whereas the Federal Government must recover and identify 
physical remains of victims of state-sanctioned racial vio-
lence and help resource proper burial of remains at the 
direction of connected family and community members; 
Whereas the Federal Government must restore the voting 
rights of all formerly and currently incarcerated persons; 
Whereas the Federal Government must amend the 13th 
Amendment to the Constitution, which formally abolished 
slavery, to repeal the punishment clause, which reads 
‘‘except as a punishment for crime whereof the party 
shall have been duly convicted, shall exist within the 
United States, or any place subject to their jurisdiction’’, 
which implies that Black people convicted of crimes can 
be legally held in bondage; 
Whereas the Federal Government must exonerate Callie 
House for her unjust targeting and imprisonment, and 
the President should issue a posthumous pardon to her; 
Whereas the Federal Government should establish targeted 
funds to be administered by the National Publishers As-
sociation and the National Association of Black Owned 
Broadcasters to support the work of Black-led news pro-
VerDate Sep 11 2014 
02:09 Aug 15, 2025
Jkt 059200
PO 00000
Frm 00020
Fmt 6652
Sfmt 6300
E:\BILLS\HR414.IH
HR414
kjohnson on DSK7ZCZBW3PROD with $$_JOB
•HRES 414 IH 
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; 
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 2001, chattel slavery was declared a ‘‘crime 
against humanity’’ at the United Nations World Con-
ference Against Racism, Racial Discrimination, Xeno-
phobia and Related Intolerance in Durban, South Africa; 
Whereas, in 2021 and in 2024, the United Nations High 
Commissioner for Human Rights urged the United 
VerDate Sep 11 2014 
02:09 Aug 15, 2025
Jkt 059200
PO 00000
Frm 00021
Fmt 6652
Sfmt 6300
E:\BILLS\HR414.IH
HR414
kjohnson on DSK7ZCZBW3PROD with $$_JOB
•HRES 414 IH 
States to end anti-Black racial discrimination, violence 
and systemic racism against people of African descent by 
providing comprehensive reparations; 
Whereas, in 2022, the United Nations Committee on Elimi-
nation of All Forms of Racial Discrimination rec-
ommended implementation of a Federal reparations com-
mission to develop reparation proposals as key strategy 
for achieving racial justice; 
Whereas, in other countries, including South Africa, Canada, 
Colombia, and others, poorly designed reparations proc-
esses have not only failed to bring complete justice, but 
have created new forms of harm; 
Whereas reparations are fundamentally a justice and ac-
countability process that should carry more symbolic and 
practical power than traditional social policy; and 
Whereas reparations programs should be distinguishable from 
the Federal Government’s responsibility for people’s gen-
eral welfare, including routine social services and develop-
ment aid: Now, therefore, be it 
Resolved, That the House of Representatives— 
(1) recognizes the responsibility of the Federal 
Government to provide reparations, in all necessary 
forms, including financial compensation, to rectify 
ongoing harms resulting from violations, by the Fed-
eral Government, of Black people’s human right to 
self-determination and freedom from discrimination, 
including with respect to housing, health, education, 
life, security of person, water and sanitation, and a 
healthy environment; 
VerDate Sep 11 2014 
02:09 Aug 15, 2025
Jkt 059200
PO 00000
Frm 00022
Fmt 6652
Sfmt 6201
E:\BILLS\HR414.IH
HR414
kjohnson on DSK7ZCZBW3PROD with $$_JOB
•HRES 414 IH 
(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 
demands arising from chattel slavery and its long-
standing impact on Black people; and 
(7) honors the lives, possibilities, and legacies of 
those named and unnamed whose lives and contribu-
tions were stolen by the institution of chattel slavery 
VerDate Sep 11 2014 
02:09 Aug 15, 2025
Jkt 059200
PO 00000
Frm 00023
Fmt 6652
Sfmt 6201
E:\BILLS\HR414.IH
HR414
kjohnson on DSK7ZCZBW3PROD with $$_JOB