119-hres414

[Congressional Bills 119th Congress]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office]
[H. Res. 414 Introduced in House

    (IH) ]

<DOC>

119th CONGRESS
 1st Session
H. RES. 414

Recognizing that the United States has a moral and legal obligation to 
 provide reparations for the crime of 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 15, 2025

 Ms. Lee of Pennsylvania (for herself, Ms. Pressley, Ms. Tlaib, Ms. 
 Omar, Mrs. Ramirez, Mr. Thanedar, Mr. Jackson of Illinois, Ms. 
 Crockett, Mrs. Foushee, Mrs. McIver, Ms. Simon, Ms. Williams of 
Georgia, Mr. Johnson of Georgia, 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 crime of 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 non-repetition 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 crimes 
 and 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 adults and children 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 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 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 
 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 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 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, reparations, 
 and racial justice;
Whereas, in 1955, over 8,000 residents and over 400 businesses 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 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, 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 percent of the incarcerated 
 population in the State, the highest 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 
 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 22 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 15 percent of 
 students in public schools, make up 45 percent of out-of-school 
 suspensions, 3 percent of in-school suspensions, and 43 percent of 
 expulsions, 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 taxation 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 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, 
 $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 benefited 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 post-enslavement, 
 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 funding and 
 infrastructure for 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 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 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 2001, chattel slavery was declared a ``crime against humanity'' at 
 the United Nations World Conference Against Racism, Racial 
 Discrimination, Xenophobia and Related Intolerance in Durban, South 
 Africa;
Whereas, in 2021 and in 2024, 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, possibilities, and legacies of those 
 named and unnamed whose lives and contributions were stolen by 
 the institution of chattel slavery and other forms of state-
 sanctioned violence and racial discrimination in the United 
 States.
 <all>