Rep. Cori Bush introduced a resolution on Wednesday urging the federal government to compensate descendants of enslaved Africans and persons of African descent.
During a press conference on Capitol Hill alongside several other House Democrats, including Rep. Barbara Lee (Calif.), Rep. Jamaal Bowman (N.Y.), and Rep. Rashid Tlaib (Mich.), Bush said that the bill will support previously proposed reparations legislation and as well as efforts at the state and local levels.
“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,” according to a draft of the resolution shared with The Washington Post.
Additionally, it calls for $14 trillion in reparations for Black Americans to bridge the racial wealth gap, which advocates of reparations say is a direct consequence of racist government policies.
“Black people in our country cannot wait any longer for our government to begin addressing each and every one of the extraordinary bits of harm it has caused since its founding, that it continues to perpetuate each and every day all across our communities all across this country,” Bush said during the press conference. She went on to say that slavery and discrimination are not “minor or insignificant” aspects of American history.
“Our country was not founded on the principle that all people are created equal. It was founded at the expense of the lives, freedoms, and well-being of Black people, African folks who they stole, whose enslavement, exploitation and dehumanization were written into the Constitution,” Rep. Bush said.
Reparations advocates often point to Jim Crow laws, discriminatory housing laws, and disparities in the justice system as examples of the discrimination that persisted after the Emancipation Proclamation.
The discussion around reparations is nothing new. It’s something that has been advocated for since the end of slavery.
In 2021, Evanston, Ill., became the first U.S. city to create a reparations plan for Black residents. Then in 2022, Harvard University established a $100 million fund for descendants of enslaved people.
Bush’s Reparations Now resolution comes after California’s Reparations Task Force endorsed a series of proposals this month to pay up to $1.2 million to each descendant of enslaved people living in the state.