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.

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; VerDate Sep 11 2014 03:25 May 18, 2023 Jkt 039200 PO 00000 Frm 00001 Fmt 6652 Sfmt 6300 E:\BILLS\HR414.IH HR414 kjohnson on DSK79L0C42PROD with BILLS 2 •HRES 414 IH 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 VerDate Sep 11 2014 03:25 May 18, 2023 Jkt 039200 PO 00000 Frm 00002 Fmt 6652 Sfmt 6300 E:\BILLS\HR414.IH HR414 kjohnson on DSK79L0C42PROD with BILLS 3 •HRES 414 IH 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- VerDate Sep 11 2014 03:25 May 18, 2023 Jkt 039200 PO 00000 Frm 00003 Fmt 6652 Sfmt 6300 E:\BILLS\HR414.IH HR414 kjohnson on DSK79L0C42PROD with BILLS 4 •HRES 414 IH 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; VerDate Sep 11 2014 03:25 May 18, 2023 Jkt 039200 PO 00000 Frm 00004 Fmt 6652 Sfmt 6300 E:\BILLS\HR414.IH HR414 kjohnson on DSK79L0C42PROD with BILLS 5 •HRES 414 IH 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- VerDate Sep 11 2014 03:25 May 18, 2023 Jkt 039200 PO 00000 Frm 00005 Fmt 6652 Sfmt 6300 E:\BILLS\HR414.IH HR414 kjohnson on DSK79L0C42PROD with BILLS 6 •HRES 414 IH 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, VerDate Sep 11 2014 03:25 May 18, 2023 Jkt 039200 PO 00000 Frm 00006 Fmt 6652 Sfmt 6300 E:\BILLS\HR414.IH HR414 kjohnson on DSK79L0C42PROD with BILLS 7 •HRES 414 IH 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; VerDate Sep 11 2014 03:25 May 18, 2023 Jkt 039200 PO 00000 Frm 00007 Fmt 6652 Sfmt 6300 E:\BILLS\HR414.IH HR414 kjohnson on DSK79L0C42PROD with BILLS 8 •HRES 414 IH 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 VerDate Sep 11 2014 04:17 May 18, 2023 Jkt 039200 PO 00000 Frm 00008 Fmt 6652 Sfmt 6300 E:\BILLS\HR414.IH HR414 kjohnson on DSK79L0C42PROD with BILLS 9 •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 o [Text truncated for display. 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