Ayanna Pressley to reintroduce legislation that would bring reparations to Black Americans

Local News

H.R. 40 was first introduced by Rep. John Conyers in 1989, and would create a committee to study the effects of slavery and recommend reparations.

Rep. Ayanna Pressley announced Wednesday she would reintroduce H.R. 40, federal legislation that would study the impacts of slavery and suggest reparations for Black Americans. 

The Commission to Study and Develop Reparations Proposals for African Americans Act was first introduced by Rep. John Conyers in 1989. Repeatedly introduced since then, the bill moved out of committee for the first time in April. 

As its new lead sponsor in the House, Pressley takes over from former Rep. Sheila Jackson Lee, who worked with Conyers to push H.R. 40 from her first year in Congress in 1995 until her death in July from cancer.

“It is an honor to inherit the privilege of carrying this bill forward,” Pressley said in a press conference Wednesday. She promised Lee that she would “keep working on our priorities and never give up.” 

The bill, unchanged by Pressley in this reintroduction, would create a federal commission that would investigate the impacts of slavery and provide concrete proposals for reparations.

The commission must gather documentation and evidence of slavery in the U.S., study the role federal and state governments played in supporting slavery, analyze the laws and policies against freed slaves and their descendants, and recommend ways for the U.S. to recognize and remedy these effects through reparations. 

“Reparations are a necessary step toward achieving justice,” said Pressley, who added that we are “still very much in the Civil Rights Movement.” “This is a pragmatic policy that is fundamentally about repairing harm and building a more just America,” she said.

Pressley called the current political climate “a moment of anti-Blackness on steroids.” President Donald Trump issued an executive order last month banning DEI programs and policies in federal agencies, leading other companies and universities to follow suit by changing their own policies, including Harvard and Northeastern. 

“Donald Trump and his co-president Elon Musk and their enablers in Congress and the courts are working overtime to strip away our rights,” Pressley said.

She announced the bill alongside Lee’s daughter, Erica Lee Carter, who ran in a special election and completed her mother’s term in Congress from November 2024 to January 2025. She described H.R. 40 as Lee’s “passion project.”

“We are nothing without a record and official documentation; you cannot right wrongs without an accurate record of those wrongs. This is what America needs,” Carter said at the conference. “H.R.40 is long overdue, and even more necessary under this administration.” 

Pressley was also supported by Reps. Bonnie Watson Coleman, Summer Lee, Jonathan Jackson, Latifa Simon, and Yvette Clarke, all of whom spoke to the importance of co-sponsor Sen. Cory Booker introducing the bill’s Senate equivalent. 

Boston “counts Black wealth at just $8,” Pressley said, compared to the wealth of white households at $247,500. Nationwide the wealth gap — which Pressley cited as evidence of slavery’s continued impact on Black Americans — is over $10 trillion. 

H.R. 40 aims to change that.

“From Jim Crow, to red lining, to mass incarceration, our government through policies and budgets has perpetuated and entrenched these harms for generations. The disparities that we see in health outcomes, housing, education, wealth, and more are by design,” Pressley said. “It is not only about Black history, but it is about Black futures.” 

This post was originally published on this site