The Number That Stopped Me
There is something about H.R. 40 that I did not fully understand until I looked more carefully at what the legislation actually proposes. H.R. 40 is not a bill ordering the federal government to start mailing reparations checks to Black folks. It does not establish a dollar amount for every descendant of enslaved people. It does not transfer land or create a completed reparations program. At its core, H.R. 40 would establish a federal commission to study the history and continuing effects of slavery and discrimination and recommend possible remedies. That distinction matters because much of the public argument about H.R. 40 sometimes sounds as though Congress is deciding whether to pay reparations tomorrow. Congress has spent decades struggling to create the commission that would formally study what federal repair might involve.
It Started in 1989
Representative John Conyers Jr. of Michigan first introduced H.R. 40 in 1989. The number itself carried historical meaning. It referred to the unfulfilled Civil War-era promise commonly remembered as “40 acres and a mule.” Conyers continued introducing the legislation Congress after Congress. The bill became almost a ritual of persistence. A new Congress would arrive, H.R. 40 would return, advocates would organize around it, and the legislation would fail to become law. Presidents changed. Congressional majorities changed. Generations changed. The question remained.
John Conyers Kept Bringing It Back
There is something remarkable about repeatedly introducing legislation when you know the political system is unlikely to pass it. Conyers did not live to see H.R. 40 become law. But his persistence kept the question of reparations inside the federal legislative record. That matters because political silence can eventually become historical silence. By introducing the measure repeatedly, he forced Congress to retain a question many Americans would have preferred to declare settled: What does the United States owe after centuries of slavery and legally enforced racial discrimination?
Sheila Jackson Lee Carried the Work Forward
After Conyers left Congress, Representative Sheila Jackson Lee of Texas became the leading House champion of H.R. 40. She continued pushing the legislation and helped bring it farther through the legislative process. Following her death in 2024, Representative Ayanna Pressley of Massachusetts took up the role of lead House sponsor. Senator Cory Booker has led the companion effort in the Senate. The names changed, but the central question remained remarkably similar. Should the federal government establish a formal commission to study the historical injuries and develop proposals for repair?
What H.R. 40 Actually Does
The current proposal would create a commission rather than immediately establish a national reparations program. The commission would examine slavery and subsequent racial discrimination, consider their continuing consequences, and recommend appropriate remedies. The current version provides for fifteen commission members appointed from several sources, including presidential and congressional appointments and representatives selected from major civil-society and reparations organizations. Whatever someone’s position on reparations themselves, it is important to understand what the legislation actually says before debating it.
A Study Is Not a Check
That distinction changes the conversation. Supporting the creation of a commission does not by itself determine what reparations must ultimately look like. A commission could examine direct payments, but reparative policy could potentially involve many other approaches, including housing, education, business investment, health disparities, land, institutional development, or other forms of redress. The commission’s purpose is partly to examine those questions and make recommendations. Congress would still have to decide what, if anything, to do with those recommendations.
Why Study Something We Already Know Happened?
Critics can reasonably ask why another government study is necessary when the historical existence of slavery is undisputed. We know slavery occurred. We know federal and state governments protected it. We know Reconstruction was followed by segregation and disfranchisement. We know discriminatory policies affected housing, employment, education, lending, and wealth accumulation. But establishing those broad historical facts is different from designing a federal remedy. A serious reparations proposal raises difficult questions about eligibility, valuation, administration, funding, constitutional authority, historical responsibility, and what forms of repair would actually accomplish their intended purpose. Those questions require more than slogans from either side.
Then Came the 2021 Vote
In April 2021, H.R. 40 reached a milestone that had taken more than three decades to achieve. The House Judiciary Committee voted 25–17 to advance the legislation. For supporters, that represented historic progress. After years of introduction and reintroduction, a congressional committee had finally approved the measure. But committee approval is not passage by Congress. The legislation did not receive the House floor action necessary to become law, and it did not complete the Senate process. The commission still was not created.
A Door Can Open Without Anyone Walking Through It
That 2021 moment fascinates me because it demonstrates the difference between political progress and political completion. Something can advance farther than it ever has and still go nowhere. A committee vote can make history without making law. Supporters could legitimately say H.R. 40 had achieved an unprecedented breakthrough. Critics could point out that Congress still had not enacted it. Both statements could be true at the same time.
The Political Parties Have Not Treated H.R. 40 the Same
The political history also deserves precision rather than a simple statement that both major parties have behaved identically. Congressional support for H.R. 40 has overwhelmingly come from Democrats, along with independent Senator Bernie Sanders, while Republican congressional support has been extremely limited or absent at crucial stages. The 2021 House Judiciary Committee vote, for example, divided along party lines. At the same time, Democratic control of Congress and the presidency did not result in H.R. 40 becoming federal law. Those are two different historical facts, and understanding the record requires acknowledging both.
Obama and the Political Limits of Reparations
Barack Obama’s presidency created particular expectations because the country had elected its first Black president. Yet a federal reparations commission did not become law during his administration. After leaving office, Obama spoke more openly about reparations and indicated that he considered arguments for them justified while also describing the issue as politically difficult. His position illustrates one of the recurring problems surrounding reparations. A politician can acknowledge the historical argument while believing that the political system will not support the remedy. Whether one views that as political realism or insufficient leadership depends upon one’s perspective, but the result was the same: no federal reparations commission was established during his presidency.
The Biden Years Did Not Produce the Commission Either
Joe Biden’s presidency brought renewed pressure from reparations advocates. Supporters urged both congressional passage of H.R. 40 and executive action that could establish a presidential commission. The Biden administration expressed support for studying the continuing effects of slavery, but no executive order creating the H.R. 40-style commission ultimately materialized. Again, the distinction between rhetorical support and institutional action became visible. A government can acknowledge historical racial inequality without taking every action advocates believe should follow from that acknowledgment.
The Debate Is Larger Than One President
I think it is too easy, however, to reduce nearly four decades of congressional history to the failure of one president or one administration. H.R. 40 has existed through Republican and Democratic presidencies, different Speakers of the House, changing Senate leadership, economic crises, wars, social movements, and dramatic changes in public attitudes about race. The legislation’s longevity reveals something larger about the difficulty the United States has had reaching political agreement on reparations. Presidents matter, but Congress matters too. So do voters, courts, advocacy organizations, state governments, and public opinion.
Then Came the 2026 United Nations Vote
In March 2026, another development added a new dimension to the conversation. The United Nations General Assembly adopted a resolution declaring the trafficking and racialized chattel enslavement of Africans the gravest crime against humanity. One hundred twenty-three countries voted in favor. Fifty-two abstained. Three voted against it: Argentina, Israel, and the United States. The American vote did not erase the country’s previous acknowledgments that slavery was profoundly wrong, but it immediately became part of the contemporary political argument over how the United States describes slavery and responds to demands for reparative justice.
Recognition and Reparations Are Different Questions
It is important not to collapse every issue into one. Recognizing slavery as a crime against humanity, establishing a commission to study reparations, and adopting a specific reparations program are separate political and legal decisions. Someone could support historical acknowledgment while opposing direct payments. Another person could support a commission while remaining undecided about what remedy it should recommend. Someone else could believe that no further study is necessary and that reparations should already have been enacted. These positions are different, and serious discussion requires distinguishing them.
What Does Repair Actually Mean?
The word reparations itself can create confusion because people imagine different things when they hear it. Some immediately picture a government check. Others envision investments in communities, educational opportunities, housing assistance, business capital, health initiatives, land programs, tax policies, or combinations of approaches. Still others oppose reparations altogether, arguing that people living today should not be held financially responsible for actions committed generations ago or questioning how eligibility could fairly be determined. Those disagreements are precisely why the commission question has remained politically significant. Before government can decide whether to repair something, it has to determine what repair means.
The Wealth Question Cannot Be Ignored
The reparations debate is also connected to wealth. Enslavement was not merely a system of personal prejudice. It was an economic institution in which labor was extracted without wages while enslaved people themselves were treated as property. After emancipation, discriminatory policies in housing, lending, employment, education, and other areas affected opportunities for wealth accumulation. That does not mean every economic difference today can be traced to one historical cause. It does mean that discussions of repair inevitably become discussions about how wealth was created, distributed, protected, and inherited.
Government Has Used Reparative Policies Before
The United States is not unfamiliar with the concept of compensating people for government-inflicted harm. Different groups have received compensation or special remedies under particular historical circumstances. Japanese Americans incarcerated during World War II are among the best-known examples. The federal government eventually apologized and provided payments to eligible survivors through the Civil Liberties Act of 1988. That precedent does not automatically determine what should happen regarding slavery because the histories, eligible populations, legal questions, and time periods differ. But it demonstrates that reparative action is not completely foreign to American government.
The Hard Question of Time
One of the strongest objections to slavery reparations concerns the passage of generations. The formerly enslaved people themselves are no longer alive. Neither are the slaveholders who legally owned them. That creates difficult questions about responsibility and eligibility. Supporters respond that institutions can outlive individuals and that some consequences of public policy can pass across generations. Opponents argue that contemporary citizens should not bear personal responsibility for acts they did not commit. Those competing arguments cannot be resolved merely by accusing one side of ignorance or the other of indifference. They are part of the substantive debate a serious national conversation would have to confront.
What H.R. 40 Represents to Me Historically
Whatever eventually happens to the legislation, I find the history of H.R. 40 revealing. A bill first introduced in 1989 has survived long enough for its original congressional champion to pass the responsibility to another generation of lawmakers. That tells me the reparations question has not disappeared. America has neither adopted a national reparations program nor reached a political consensus that the issue should be permanently closed. Instead, the question has remained suspended between historical acknowledgment and political action.
Government Action and Community Action Are Not Opposites
There is another lesson I take from this history. Waiting for government and building within our own communities do not have to be competing ideas. Black Americans have historically done both. We petitioned government while establishing churches. We demanded public education while creating our own schools. We challenged discriminatory banks while building Black financial institutions. We fought for civil rights legislation while organizing mutual-aid societies, businesses, professional associations, fraternities, sororities, civic organizations, and community institutions. Self-determination does not require abandoning claims against government, and seeking government redress does not require sitting still while waiting for Washington.
Building Requires More Than Emotion
If Black communities want greater economic independence, the work requires more than anger about what government has failed to do. It requires organization, capital, financial literacy, professional expertise, governance, accountability, business development, education, land ownership, succession planning, and institutions capable of surviving their founders. Pooling resources sounds powerful, but collective money without strong governance can create another kind of disappointment. Every dollar needs accountability. Every leader needs oversight. Every institution needs rules capable of surviving personality conflicts. Economic self-determination is serious work.
We Can Hold Two Ideas at the Same Time
I can believe that government should be held accountable for government actions while also believing communities should strengthen themselves regardless of what government decides. Those positions do not contradict each other. If a legitimate claim exists, pursuing it is one form of action. Building economic capacity is another. One works through public institutions; the other strengthens community institutions. History suggests Black advancement has rarely depended upon a single strategy.
Thirty-Seven Years Raises Its Own Question
As of 2026, the H.R. 40 idea has been before Congress in one form or another for roughly thirty-seven years. The current legislation still seeks the creation of a commission rather than implementing a completed national reparations program. For supporters, that long delay demonstrates how difficult it has been even to institutionalize the study of reparations. For opponents, the passage of time does not resolve their substantive objections to the policy. Either way, thirty-seven years is long enough to reveal that the disagreement is not merely administrative. It reflects a deeper national conflict over history, responsibility, citizenship, wealth, and what one generation owes for consequences inherited from another.
Summary
H.R. 40 was first introduced by Representative John Conyers in 1989 and has been repeatedly reintroduced over the decades. Its purpose is to establish a federal commission to examine slavery, subsequent racial discrimination, their continuing effects, and possible forms of reparative redress. The measure advanced from the House Judiciary Committee in 2021 but did not become law. Representative Ayanna Pressley now leads the House effort, with Senator Cory Booker leading companion legislation in the Senate. In 2026, the United States also joined Argentina and Israel in voting against a UN resolution describing the trafficking and racialized chattel enslavement of Africans as the gravest crime against humanity.
Conclusion
After all these years, H.R. 40 leaves me with a question larger than one piece of legislation.
How long does a nation need to study its past before deciding what responsibility the present carries for it?
Americans can disagree about the answer. They can disagree about cash payments, eligibility, government responsibility, costs, and what reparations should mean. Those disagreements belong in the conversation.
But there is another lesson Black history has already taught us. We do not have to choose between demanding accountability from the country and building strength within our own communities.
We can pursue justice and build institutions. We can demand public accountability and practice economic self-determination. We can study the past while organizing for the future.
Government may decide how long it wants to debate repair. We still have to decide what we are willing to build while the debate continues.