Commission to Study and Develop Reparation Proposals for African-Americans Act

The Commission to Study and Develop Reparation Proposals for African-Americans Act, is an Act of Congress in the United States introduced in 1989 by Rep. John Conyers. The act aims to create a commission to examine the merits of introducing reparations to African-Americans for US slavery. The most recent sponsor of the act was Rep. Ayanna Pressley, on January 3, 2025, to the 119th Congress.^[1] The bill was previously also proposed by Sheila Jackson Lee in January 2023 before her death in 2024.^[2]

Commission to Study and Develop Reparation Proposals for African Americans Act

Long title	To address the fundamental injustice, cruelty, brutality, and inhumanity of slavery in the United States and the 13 American colonies between 1619 and 1865 and to establish a commission to study and consider a national apology and proposal for reparations for the institution of slavery, its subsequent de jure and de facto racial and economic discrimination against African Americans, and the impact of these forces on living African Americans, to make recommendations to the Congress on appropriate remedies, and for other purposes.
Announced in	the 119th United States Congress
Number of co-sponsors	81
Legislative history
Introduced in the House of Representatives as H.R. 40 by Ayanna Pressley (D–MA) on January 3, 2025 Committee consideration by House Judiciary

History

Conyers introduced the act in 1989, and successively introduced it in each Congress until his retirement almost 30 years later.

Juneteenth 2019 saw the House Judiciary Subcommittee on the Constitution, Civil Rights, and Civil Liberties conduct a hearing on this issue, in what was seen as a historic sitting, given the previous reparations discussion in that venue took place in 2007, "one year before the election of the country's first black president".^[3]

Rep. Conyers died in October 2019, having sponsored the Act each and every Legislative session from 1989 to 2017. The "40" number refers to "the unfulfilled promise" the United States "made to freed slaves: that after the Civil War, they would get forty acres and a mule".^[4]

Cory Booker is sponsor of a companion bill in the Senate. Democratic House Speaker Nancy Pelosi expressed support for H.R. 40.^[5] Several of the 2020 Democratic presidential candidates have expressed their support.^[6]

In April 2021, the bill cleared committee for the first time in its history, heading to the House floor for markups and a vote.^[7][8]

Drafting and amendments (1989–2023)

The bill traces its origins to Representative John Conyers' initial 1989 proposal (H.R. 40), which called for a commission to examine slavery's lingering effects without specifying reparations models. Over 32 re-introductions, the legislation evolved through four distinct phases: the Fact-Finding Era (1989–2000) focused on historical documentation; the Quantification Phase (2001–2014) added economic impact assessments; the Implementation Period (2015–2020) incorporated specific redress proposals; and the Current Framework (2021–present) expanded to include systemic racism beyond slavery. The 2023 version (S. 40) mandates the commission calculate damages from 1619 through 2025, explicitly including Jim Crow, redlining, and mass incarceration impacts. This version also requires consultation with the National Archives to declassify relevant documents about federal complicity in slavery.^[9]

Contents

The bill, first proposed in 1989 by Rep. John Conyers, Jr. (former U.S. Representative for Michigan) calling for the creation of Commission to study and submit a formal report to Congress and the American people with its findings and recommendations on remedies and reparation proposals for African-Americans, as a result of ;

1. the institution of slavery, which included the Federal and State governments that supported the institution of slavery.
2. the de jure and de facto discrimination against freed slaves and their descendants from the end of the Civil War to the present day.
3. the lingering negative effects of the institution of slavery.
4. the manner in which textual and digital instructional resources and technologies are being used to deny the inhumanity of slavery and the crime against humanity of people of African descent.
5. the role of Northern complicity in the Southern based institution of slavery.
6. the direct benefits to societal institutions, public and private sectors, as well as higher education, corporate, religious and associational entities.
7. recommending appropriate ways to educate the American public of the Commission's findings.
8. recommending appropriate remedies in consideration of the Commission's findings.^[10]

International precedents

The commission's proposed methodology draws from three global models: Germany's Holocaust reparations program (which paid $89 billion as of 2023) informs its multi-generational payout structure; South Africa's Truth and Reconciliation Commission inspires its testimonial process; and Colombia's 2011 Victims' Law (reparations for civil war violence) provides a template for addressing non-economic harms like cultural erasure. Notably, the bill rejects the CARICOM Ten-Point Plan's focus on debt cancellation, instead emphasizing direct payments and institutional reforms. ^[11]A 2021 GAO report confirmed the commission would be the first government body to apply the UN's "Van Boven Principles" on reparations (right to restitution, compensation, rehabilitation) to domestic racial injustice.^[12]

Bill excerpt

• (a) Findings.—The Congress finds that—
  (1) approximately 4,000,000 Africans and their descendants were enslaved in the United States and colonies that became the United States from 1619 to 1865;
  (2) the institution of slavery was constitutionally and statutorily sanctioned by the Government of the United States from 1789 through 1865;
  (3) the slavery that flourished in the United States constituted an immoral and inhumane deprivation of Africans' life, liberty, African citizenship rights, and cultural heritage, and denied them the fruits of their own labor;
  (4) a preponderance of scholarly, legal, community evidentiary documentation and popular culture markers constitute the basis for inquiry into the on-going effects of the institution of slavery and its legacy of persistent systemic structures of discrimination on living African-Americans and society in the United States; and
  (5) following the abolition of slavery the United States Government, at the Federal, State, and local level, continued to perpetuate, condone and often profit from practices that continued to brutalize and disadvantage African-Americans, including share cropping, convict leasing, Jim Crow, redlining, unequal education, and disproportionate treatment at the hands of the criminal justice system; and
  (6) as a result of the historic and continued discrimination, African-Americans continue to suffer debilitating economic, educational, and health hardships including but not limited to; having nearly 1,000,000 Black people incarcerated; an unemployment rate more than twice the current White unemployment rate; and an average of less than 1⁄16 of the wealth of White families, a disparity which has worsened, not improved over time.^[10]
• Purpose.—The purpose of this Act is to establish a commission to study and develop reparation proposals for African-Americans as a result of—
  (1) the institution of slavery, including both the Trans-Atlantic and the domestic "trade" which existed from 1565 in colonial Florida and from 1619 through 1865 within the other colonies that became the United States, and which included the Federal and State governments which constitutionally and statutorily supported the institution of slavery;
  (2) the de jure and de facto discrimination against freed slaves and their descendants from the end of the Civil War to the present, including economic, political, educational, and social discrimination;
  (3) the lingering negative effects of the institution of slavery and the discrimination described in paragraphs (1) and (2) on living African-Americans and on society in the United States;
  (4) the manner in which textual and digital instructional resources and technologies are being used to deny the inhumanity of slavery and the crime against humanity of people of African descent in the United States;
  (5) the role of Northern complicity in the Southern based institution of slavery;
  (6) the direct benefits to societal institutions, public and private, including higher education, corporations, religious and associational;
  (7) and thus, recommend appropriate ways to educate the American public of the Commission's findings;
  (8) and thus, recommend appropriate remedies in consideration of the Commission's findings on the matters described in paragraphs (1), (2), (3), (4), (5), and (6); and
  (9) submit to the Congress the results of such examination, together with such recommendations.^[10]

Phased implementation

If enacted, the commission would operate through four phases:

Phase 1 (Years 1–2): Establish 12 regional fact-finding committees to document local harms, modeled after the 1967 Kerner Commission but with subpoena power. These would partner with HBCUs like Howard University's Institute for African American Reparations.

Phase 2 (Year 3): Develop three redress options—direct payments (calculated using 2020 Fed racial wealth gap data), targeted social programs (e.g., housing vouchers tied to redlined areas), and systemic reforms (e.g., sentencing review for drug offenses).

Phase 3 (Years 4–5): Conduct national hearings in former slave trade ports (Charleston), industrial hubs (Detroit), and sites of racial massacres (Tulsa). The bill allocates $12 million for witness protection given the sensitive testimonies expected.

Phase 4 (Years 6–7): Deliver a final report to Congress with legislative language for a Reparations Trust Fund, proposing both congressional appropriations and private sector contributions from identified slavery-profiting corporations.^[13]

Legislative history

As of June 11, 2025:

Congress	Short title	Bill number(s)	Date introduced	Sponsor(s)	# of cosponsors	Latest status
101st Congress	Commission to Study Reparation Proposals for African Americans Act	H.R. 3745	November 20, 1989	John Conyers (D-MI)	24	Died in Committee
113th Congress		H.R. 40	January 3, 2013	John Conyers (D-MI)	2	Died in Committee
114th Congress		H.R. 40	January 6, 2015	John Conyers (D-MI)	2	Died in Committee
115th Congress	Commission to Study and Develop Reparation Proposals for African-Americans Act	H.R. 40	January 3, 2017	John Conyers (D-MI)	35	Died in Committee
116th Congress		H.R. 40	January 3, 2019	Sheila Jackson Lee (D-TX)	173	Died in Committee
		S. 1083	April 9, 2019	Cory Booker (D-NJ)	20	Died in Committee
117th Congress		H.R. 40	January 4, 2021	Sheila Jackson Lee (D-TX)	196	Died in Committee
		S. 40	January 25, 2021	Cory Booker (D-NJ)	22	Died in Committee
118th Congress		H.R. 40	January 9, 2023	Sheila Jackson Lee (D-TX)	130	Died in Committee
		S. 40	January 24, 2023	Cory Booker (D-NJ)	24	Died in Committee
119th Congress		H.R. 40	January 3, 2025	Ayanna Pressley (D-MA)	81	Referred to the House Committee on the Judiciary

See also

• John Conyers
• Mayors Organized for Reparations and Equity
• Racism in the United States
• Reparations for slavery in the United States
• Slavery