Black lawmakers renew their call for federal reparations

TOM WILLIAMS | CQ-ROLL CALL

U.S. Rep. Ayanna Pressley (D-Mass.) introduced H.R. 40, which would create a 15-member commission to develop recommendations for reparations to Black American descendants of slaves.

The growing movement for reparations for the descendants of Africans enslaved in America is receiving another jolt of energy.  

U.S. Rep. Ayanna Pressley (D-Mass.) is revitalizing the work of the late Texas Rep. Sheila Jackson Lee with the reintroduction of H.R. 40. The newly reintroduced bill would create a 15-member commission to study concrete solutions to the Black Wall Street Tulsa Massacre. Also, the new bill would develop recommendations for reparations for slavery.

Sen. Cory Booker (D-N.J.) is introducing a similar bill in the United States Senate. However, Pressley says the House bill already has 70 co-sponsors, and she will ask Republicans and Democrats to co-sponsor H.R. 40. However, there are no official Republican sponsors yet. The bill would also probe racist disparities that inhibited Black wealth.

Marc Morial, the head of the National Urban League, said “We must stay the course!” The head of the economic civil rights organization says the current wealth gap disparity between Blacks and whites is “10-1 at least. Maybe higher.”

Pressley wants what she calls the “reparative work,” similar to what was offered to Native Americans and Japanese Americans. In 1988, Republican President Ronald Reagan apologized to the surviving Japanese Americans for their incarceration during World War ll when 80,000 of them received $20,000 each from the federal government as part of the apology.  Reparations for Native Americans also occurred after World War ll when $1.3 billion was paid by the Indian Claims Commission as it provided $1,000 per person.

Rep. Joshua Jackson (D-Ill.) pointed to Evanston, Illinois, which offers reparations as the first municipal program in the United States to address racial discrimination and segregation. Black residents and their descendants who lived in Evanston between 1919 and 1969 are eligible for up to $25,000 to help with real estate-related issues.

From the press conference on Capitol Hill, Pressley encouraged President Donald Trump and the man she calls his “co-president,” Elon Musk, to support H.R. 40.

Presley is the third Black congressional leader to carry on the legacy of reparations. It began in 1969 with the late Michigan Rep. John Conyers and was reintroduced by Jackson Lee in recent years. Lee received 140 co-signers on the bill that Pressley and Booker now champion. Jackson Lee’s daughter, Rep. Erica Lee Carter, said, “This is not the past” but about the present and future.

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