For years Congresswoman Sheila Jackson Lee has picked up the mantle to lead efforts to create a commission to study reparations for African Americans, and now the Democrat from Texas and others believe they finally have the votes for passage in the U.S. House of Representatives.
“This has been a 30-plus year journey,” Congresswoman Jackson Lee declared. “We had to take a different approach. We had to go one by one to members explaining this does not generate a check.”
If the measure passes the House and Senate, it would create a commission that would hold hearings with testimony from those who support and oppose the idea.
“Reparations is about repair and when you repair the damage that has been done, you do so much to move a society forward. This commission can be a healing process. Telling the truth can heal America,” she said.
If the bill does pass the House but fails in the Senate, the congresswoman said she and others would push President Biden to sign an executive order to create the commission.
The White House didn’t immediately respond.
Congresswoman Jackson Lee added that there has never been another time in which she has garnered so much support and momentum for H.R. 40, the so-called reparations legislation that focuses on truth, racial healing, and transformation.
Congresswoman Jackson Lee: “Give Credit to the Giants”
Congresswoman Jackson Lee recently reflected on the long-overdue redress to African descendants of slaves.
She also praised the resiliency of Black Americans.
“I want to give credit to the giants that were and are Black Americans. They are giants,” Congresswoman Jackson Lee declared.
“I want to give credit to the everyday mom and dad who get up every day and get to work and provide for their family. I’m going to give those who came up on the farms or stayed on the farm and raised nine and ten and twelve children,” she reflected.
The Congresswoman continued, “I want to give them the honor that they deserve, and that is to recognize the insurmountable odds that some of them had and how they continue to plant seeds of respect and dignity in their children.
“Has anyone addressed the question of slavery and its comprehensive impact on Black Americans in this country? This is what H.R. 40 will do.”
While the bill doesn’t place a monetary value on reparations, it does focus on truth, racial healing, and transformation.
Government’s Role in Supporting Slavery
The commission’s mission includes identifying the role of federal and state governments in supporting the institution of slavery, forms of discrimination in public and private sectors against freed slaves and their descendants, and lingering adverse effects of slavery on living African Americans and society.
Congresswoman Jackson Lee, who sits on numerous House committees, including the Judiciary, Budget, and Homeland Security, has made the reparations legislation her top priority during the 117th Congress.
“I think if people begin to associate this legislation with what happened to the descendants of enslaved Africans as a human rights violation, the sordid past that violated the human rights of all of us who are descendants of enslaved Africans, I think that we can find common ground to pass this legislation,” Congresswoman Jackson Lee pronounced.
“Can anyone imagine that we’ve never gotten a simple, effective, deeply-embedded, and well-respected apology?”
The Congresswoman is further encouraged by the support of the most co-sponsors (166) in the bill’s history, which dates back decades to former Democratic Rep. John Conyers Jr., of Michigan, who first introduced the legislation in 1989.
Richmond told the Black Press that the administration supports Congresswoman Jackson Lee’s H.R. 40.
“We do support a commission and H.R. 40; we know we can’t wait. We have to start acting now,” Richmond declared. “We don’t need a study to tell us that systemic racism is out there. We don’t need a study to tell us that redlining in Black communities has been treated a lot differently.”
Richmond continued: “We don’t think the Black community should have to wait on a study, we need to deal with systemic racism right now and, yes, we support the commission, but it’s not going to stop us from acting right now.”
I would love to say ” no to apology yes to monetary funding”!!!! Juan Wiggins Descendant by way of Lee King/Delores, Melanated person labeled African American by way of Jessy Jackson, will not except sorry for our Ancestor’s mistreatment provided from Europeans who choose to do so before me., Elder’s blood sweat tears confirm monetary funds was not paid for their hard forced labor from Servitude and our generations., bound mentally when decades of denial loans land and wealth.
who think, community members,. a study is needed to advance reparations of apology? wow Madam Texan for real? of all the lynchings you know about you need a apology Madam? truly a smack that will not turn the other cheek.
And slavery was not over in the 1800 .was it over in 1955 when I was born. They just changed it to sharecropping and then when the year was over and it was time to get payed they will say they did not make enough money to pay my mom at the end of the year. They would say they had to buy seeds.They supposed to have been taking Social Security out but they did not. Airplanes came over the fields while we pick cotton and sprayed all of us. When I was five years old I was picking cotton let me take that back when I was old enough to carry a bucket. My mom had to stop school in the third grade to go to the cotton fields So would an apology work for my mom and me ? I don’t think so