The push for a bill that would drive research into reparations for Black Americans

by Juana Summers and Ashley Brown, NPR

NPR’s Juana Summers talks with Democratic New York Congressman Jamaal Bowman about the effort to reintroduce H.R. 40, a bill that would create a task force to study reparations for Black Americans.

JUANA SUMMERS, HOST:

Twenty years ago, the late Democratic Congressman John Conyers of Michigan posed this question to a crowd of thousands.

JOHN CONYERS: Reparations, not in the next century, not in 2185, not 10 years from now. But reparations when? Reparations when?

SUMMERS: He was the original sponsor of H.R.40, a bill that would create a task force to study reparations for Black Americans, a bill named after the storied and ultimately unfulfilled reconstruction era promise of 40 acres of land for formerly enslaved people. That rallying cry from Conyers came on the grounds of the U.S. Capitol. Some of that building’s most recognizable architecture is one of many still visible legacies of slave labor. And in its halls, the debate has continued over what reparations should look like or whether they should exist at all…

Enjoy the complete conversation here.

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