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American History

Ta-Nehisi Coates and Danny Glover testify about reparation for the descendants of slaves during a hearing before the House Judiciary Subcommittee on the Constitution, Civil Rights, and Civil Liberties, June 2019.

‘Cut the Check’: The Americans Who Deserve Reparations Walk Among Us

By HR 40 Congressional Hearing, News & Current Affairs, Reparations

HR 40 calls the country to account for racist predation inflicted upon black folks living and dead. By Aaron Ross Coleman, The Nation — When I saw a little black boy standing outside the Rayburn House Office Building holding a placard that read “Cut the Check—MLK,” I knew it was going to be an extraordinary day in Washington, DC. This Juneteenth, Congress held its first hearing on the resolution to…

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Congressional Hearing on H.R. 40, Legislation to Study Slavery Reparations. Washington, DC — On June 19, 2019 (Juneteenth)

Congressional Hearing on H.R. 40, Legislation to Study Slavery Reparations

By HR 40 Congressional Hearing, News & Current Affairs, Reparations, Video/Audio

Full Video: Washington, DC — On June 19, 2019 (Juneteenth), the House Judiciary Subcommittee on the Constitution, Civil Rights, and Civil Liberties held a hearing on H.R. 40, the Commission to Study and Develop Reparation Proposals for African-Americans Act. The purpose of the hearing was to examine, through open and constructive discourse, the legacy of the trans-Atlantic slave trade, its continuing impact on the community and the path to restorative justice.…

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Rep. Sheila Jackson Lee (D-Texas) sponsored HR 40, legislation to form a commission to study slavery reparations for African Americans.

A Look at the Juneteenth Hearing on Slavery Reparations Bill

By HR 40 Congressional Hearing, News & Current Affairs, Reparations

Originally published 6.19.19 by The Takeaway, WNYC Studios — On this Juneteenth, or June 19, we celebrate the end of slavery in the United States 154 years ago. Members of Congress chose this symbolic day to hold hearings on a reparations bill. The bill, if it passes, will establish a commission to determine whether — and if so, how — the US government owes anything to the descendants of enslaved people. To…

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Formerly enslaved people preparing cotton for the gin on Smith’s plantation, Port Royal Island, South Carolina, 1861–1862

Making Good on the Broken Promise of Reparations

By Editors' Choice, Reparations

By Katherine Franke — A bill calling for the federal government to “study and consider” how to provide reparations to African Americans for slavery has been introduced into every session of the US Congress for the last thirty years. The bill’s aim is “to address the fundamental injustice, cruelty, brutality, and inhumanity of slavery in the United States and the thirteen American colonies between 1619 and 1865.” Representative John Conyers, the primary sponsor of the…

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Titus Kaphar: Page 4 of Jefferson’s ‘Farm Book’…, 2018. That page of Jefferson’s ledger lists the names of enslaved people on his plantation at Monticello in January 1774.

How Proslavery Was the Constitution?

By Commentaries/Opinions, Reparations

By Nicholas Guyatt — Were the Founding Fathers responsible for American slavery? William Lloyd Garrison, the celebrated abolitionist, certainly thought so. In an uncompromising address in Framingham, Massachusetts, on July 4, 1854, Garrison denounced the hypocrisy of a nation that declared that “all men are created equal” while holding nearly four million African-Americans in bondage. The US Constitution was hopelessly implicated in this terrible crime, Garrison claimed: it kept free…

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