Today’s Action: Reparations for descendants of African American slaves

By 1836, nearly half the United States economic activity was dependent on the sale of cotton, produced almost exclusively by one million slaves. Following emancipation in 1865, the formerly enslaved and their descendants faced a century of Jim Crow, under conditions nearly as dangerous and crippling as enslavement itself.

Black communities still struggle to break free from a heritage denied of basic liberties and safety, land ownership, wealth inheritance, and so much more that white Americans have enjoyed since our country’s inception. This is the case for reparations: evening the playing field with financial compensation for the theft of life to descendents of slaves. And, there’s legislation to study this much-needed possibility.

Call or email your Members of Congress and demand their support for The Commission to Study and Develop Reparation Proposals for African-Americans Act (H.R.40/S.1083).

The Civil Rights Act of 1965 marked the beginning of contemporary legal protections against discrimination for black Americans…though hardly the end of discrimination itself. Today, only 64 years later, the median income for white American is ten times that of black Americans, and organizations like Black Lives Matter remind us the deadly discrimination of Jim Crow is alive today, in the form of guns instead of nooses.

Support for studying reparations is two-fold: not just the study itself, but also a clear and vocal support for a needed change across-the-board in the status-quo for black Americans.

And it’s hundreds of years late.

Email or call (202.224.3121) your Members of Congress tell them cosponsor The Commission to Study and Develop Reparation Proposals for African-Americans (H.R.40/S.1083).