Democrats know that being the minority party won’t yield them legislative victories on issues like reparations for Black Americans. But some Black lawmakers are continuing to push legislation in hopes that they can keep the momentum alive.
Rep. Summer Lee of Pennsylvania said she plans to reintroduce the Reparations Now Resolution later this week to give activists “a mechanism to organize around.”
“There’s no bill that we know we’re going to introduce this term that would be a check on Donald Trump’s power, or that would stop his power trip, that he’s going to sign into law,” Lee told NOTUS. “But it doesn’t stop our responsibility to introduce it, to fight for it, to organize around it.”
Multiple lawmakers have introduced or plan to introduce legislation to address reparations and racial justice. They’re also continuing to organize around the issue: Lee, Sen. Cory Booker and Reps. Hank Johnson and Ayanna Pressley gathered reparations activists and grassroots organizations on Capitol Hill on Tuesday to call for federal legislative action to address historical and systemic racial injustices.
The Democrats advocating for racial justice legislation acknowledge that their work is cut out for them. Some were evasive on whether even their own Democratic colleagues support their efforts this Congress. But they said reigniting the fight for reparations is a way to steer the movement forward, even under a GOP trifecta in Washington.
Democrats have pushed reparations-related bills for decades without success, even when they were in the majority. H.R. 40, a bill that would create a commission to study reparations, was first introduced in 1989 by former Rep. John Conyers and has been reintroduced every congressional session since.
Although the bill has garnered increasing support from Democrats each Congress session — it had 130 cosponsors when it was last reintroduced in 2023 — it has barely made it out of committee, much less passed the House.
Pressley told NOTUS she’s pushing for reparations legislation this year “as an organizing prompt.” It will also serve as an “accountability metric” to ensure Democrats don’t waver on their “commitments” to equality, she said.
“This is not the time to moderate our aspirations,” the Massachusetts lawmaker said. “Everyone might not agree with that. But the message I’m getting from the electorate is that they want us Democrats to advance policies that go as bold and as deep and are as reparative as the harm.”
Johnson said he plans to reintroduce the Tulsa-Greenwood Claims Accountability Act, which seeks restitution for survivors and their descendants of the Tulsa Race Massacre of 1921. The Georgia Democrat said at the event that reparations should be taken seriously even outside a statute of limitations.
“Why can’t we have our day in court?” he asked at the event.
Booker told NOTUS that the country is in “a time where history is under assault.” In March, he introduced a bipartisan bill that would erect a monument to remember the historic Greenwood District, a Black neighborhood that was burned to the ground during the Tulsa Race Massacre. The bill hasn’t received a vote in the Senate.
The New Jersey senator also plans to introduce a bill to create a nationwide, community-based approach to addressing racial injustices.
“I’m going to keep doing the work and keep telling the truth,” Booker said.
But do these Democrats have their colleagues’ support?
Pressley said she’s “building co-sponsors” but is also encouraged by the strides her colleagues made in past years. Johnson said that he’ll be “holding discussions” with House Democratic leadership to gain its support.
Booker was vague about his support.
“I’m focusing on what I’m doing right now,” he said.
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Tinashe Chingarande is a NOTUS reporter and an Allbritton Journalism Institute fellow.