U.S. Rep. Summer Lee, D-Pa., proposed a resolution this week that compels the United States federal government to begin the process of providing reparations to Black American descendants of enslaved Africans.
The “Reparations NOW Resolution” was reintroduced on Thursday by Rep. Lee, marked by a press conference alongside progressive members of Congress and racial justice advocates and organizers. The resolution, first introduced by former U.S. Congresswoman Cori Bush in 2023, calls on the U.S. government to recognize its “moral and legal obligation to provide reparations for the crime of enslavement of Africans and its lasting harm on the lives of millions of Black people in the United States.”
The congressional bill derides the federal government for its responsibility for policies that led to the “economic, political, and social erosion of Black communities,” and calls for reparative measures to right centuries of harm. Those harms include white domestic terrorism and racial segregation, which the resolution notes have led to negative health outcomes and environmental racism, as well as mass incarceration. The resolution also notes compounding racial discrimination in banking, consumer, housing, health, education, and employment.
“This country has taken so much from Black folks and has a debt it owes,” said Lee during Thursday’s press conference, joined by U.S. Reps. Ayanna Pressley, D-Mass., and Rashida Tlaib, D-Mich., as well as former Congresswoman Bush. “The reality is that Black people have less wealth. We have a maternity mortality crisis. We are more likely to live in polluted areas, more so than any others, because the federal government made it that way.”
The 37-year-old millennial congresswoman added, “Reparations now, not later, not someday, and not when it’s politically convenient.”
Lee’s resolution comes at a flash point for the United States and its national consciousness as it relates to race in America. Since entering office, President Donald Trump has made eradicating diversity, racial equity and inclusion policies a major feature of his second term.
“With a stroke of a pen, the president was able to say that diversity, equity and inclusion are not policies or practices or goals that our government or institutions or businesses should implement, even while Black folks are demonstrably underrepresented across colleges and education, higher education, jobs and all other indices of success or outward mobility,” said Lee.
On Thursday, Bush, who was unseated in the 2024 primary election, said President Trump and his administration “would have us to believe the Civil Rights Act was a mistake, that the Voting Rights Act is just too much.” She continued, “He wants to roll back the very protections our people bled for; rights that are already so fragile for us, so conditional. And we’re supposed to just sit back and pretend that this is politics as usual?”
Bush added, “This is fascism wrapped in a suit and tie.”
The Reparations NOW Resolution lays out an urgency for the U.S. government to meet the “international legal obligation” of reparations for Black descendants of enslaved Africans, most notably compensation for the “crimes and harms of chattel slavery, the cumulative damages of enslavement, and the epochs of legal and de facto segregation.”
While it does not name a total dollar amount in proposed reparations, it notes that economists have estimated a minimum of $12 trillion is needed in order to eliminate the current racial wealth gap between Black and white Americans.
“Black folks are owed more than thoughts and prayers, and we’re owed repair. We’re owed restitution and we’re owed justice,” said Lee.
Lee’s resolution comes days after she and other members of Congress, including U.S. Sen. Cory Booker, D-N.J., joined advocates on Capitol Hill for a congressional briefing calling for several bills in support of various forms of reparations, including for Black veterans and the victims of massacres like the 1921 Tulsa riot.
Booker said there’s an “urgency” in America to confront the truth of racism and inequality, adding, “especially under a president who seems to want to Disney-ify American history.” He added that Trump “cheapens us as a whole” and “undermines our strength.”
