This Q&A seeks to answer some common questions about reparations for Black people in the United States as a remedy for enslavement and its legacies, as a matter of human rights.
1. What are reparations?
Reparations are steps to remedy and make amends for serious harm. International human rights law requires governments to remedy human rights violations, including where appropriate through reparations. Even beyond the circumstances it directly governs, human rights law offers a good framework for when governments have a responsibility to provide reparations for past and ongoing injustices and abuses, and what those efforts should look like in practice.
In particular, international human rights standards explain that remedies for human rights violations need to be tailored to the demands of a particular context and the needs and desires of affected people. Broadly speaking, meaningful reparations efforts often include steps to achieve a range of different goals including restitution, compensation, rehabilitation, satisfaction, and guarantees of non-repetition.
Restitution aims to restore a person to the circumstances that existed before the wrongful act(s) against them were committed. Compensation seeks to offset through monetary payments or other means any economically assessable damage arising from the harm suffered, including physical or mental harm, material losses, and lost opportunities. Rehabilitation might involve the provision of medical and psychological care, as well as legal and social services. Satisfaction can include a range of measures such as truth-telling, statements aimed at ending ongoing abuses, commemorations or tributes to the victims, preservation of historical memory, and expressions of regret or formal apology for wrongdoing. This kind of acknowledgment is crucial for healing and reconciliation, as it validates the experiences of victims and their descendants. Guarantees of non-repetition seek to ensure harms truly come to an end, including, for example, through institutional and legal reform or other reforms of government practices.
Overall, reparations encapsulate a broader commitment to justice, equity, and human dignity, framing historical abuses and their present-day effects in line with contemporary human rights standards.
2. What international human rights framework exists to guide reparations?
Human rights frameworks emphasize the importance of accountability and redress for wrongdoing. As such, various international human rights treaties and conventions recognize the obligation of states to provide remedies for violations of rights. The case for reparations for enslavement and its present-day effects in the US aligns with these legal standards.
The United States is a party to the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR) and the International Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination (ICERD). Both of these core international human rights treaties guarantee the right to an effective remedy for human rights violations, including acts of racial discrimination. This right requires that governments ensure access to justice, truthful information about violations, and reparation. The UN General Assembly and the UN Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights have also issued principles and guidelines on approaches to remedy and reparation for human rights violations.
3. Why are reparations important now?
Reparations are an opportunity for the US to account for the harms of enslavement and its legacies that live on today. The comprehensive impact of the laws, policies, and practices that resulted from hundreds of thousands of Africans being kidnapped and enslaved in the US has never been fully examined, assessed, or remedied. US policies—and policies of colonial authorities prior to US independence— reduced Black people to the status of property, subjecting them to horrific violence and unspeakable cruelty.
The trauma of the sexual, physical, and psychological violence and cruelty of enslavement has been passed down, in a variety of ways, for hundreds of years. Enslavement also rendered near-absolute cultural losses and severe economic crippling of entire populations, hindering many Black people’s ability to maintain identity and psychic well-being, among other things. In addition to the mental and physical harms, enslavement also rendered severe, intergenerational economic damage, which has hindered Black people’s ability to earn and accumulate wealth through to the present day.
Reparations are a crucial step towards addressing the long-lasting impacts of systemic racism and the legacies of enslavement. According to the Pew Research Center, 77% of Black adults in the US believe descendants of people enslaved in the US should be repaid in some way. Similarly, 85% of Black people in the US think that the legacy of enslavement continues to affect their economic standing today.
For generations, Black people have been denied equitable access to quality education, business loans, and home ownership opportunities, which has stunted community growth, wealth accumulation, and economic mobility. Black households possess a fraction of the wealth of their white counterparts, with a median net worth of about $24,100, compared to $188,200 for white households. This stark wealth gap illustrates the enduring effects of discriminatory policies and practices. Each year reparations are delayed only exacerbates these inequalities, depriving individuals of critical resources for skill and economic development. By implementing reparative measures, the US would not only acknowledge the injustices of the past, but also work towards rectifying the disparities that continue to hinder equity and opportunity in society.
4. What are the impacts of enslavement still felt today by Black people in the US?
Though enslaved people were declared free by the 1863 Emancipation Proclamation (excluding Texas which did not notify its enslaved people they were free until June 19, 1865), many US cities and states almost immediately implemented laws and policies that legalized racial segregation and stripped Black people of their new rights. Jim Crow laws passed by local and state governments in the 19th and 20th centuries enforced racial segregation and entrenched discrimination.
Organized racial terror, including incidents of mass violence like race massacres, intensified during Reconstruction through the early 1900s. According to the Equal Justice Initiative, nearly 6,500 Black people were killed in lynchings between 1865 and 1950. The Ku Klux Klan, white paramilitary groups, and deputized white mobs that the authorities did not successfully, or want to, restrict, helped to maintain racial social order and to prevent Black people’s progress toward equality. Federal, state, and local policy decisions in the 20th and 21st centuries, such as redlining and urban renewal, created infrastructure rooted in racial bias and present day economic, education, employment, and health inequalities, as well as housing restrictions, resulting in ongoing de facto segregation.
Jim Crow laws and Black Codes passed by local and state governments in the 19th and 20th centuries to subjugate newly freed slaves and maintain the pre-Civil War racial hierarchy still manifest today. Currently in the US, Black people are overrepresented in prison populations. For example, drug enforcement laws produce extraordinarily high and disproportionate rates of incarceration for Black people, particularly Black men. Human Rights Watch research shows that while white people use drugs at the same rates as Black people, the latter are two-and-a-half times as likely to be arrested for drug possession. Black Americans are also more likely to experience violence at the hands of police and are incarcerated at five times the rate of white people. In places like Flint, Michigan, predominantly Black communities lack access to safe, clean water. In Louisiana, Black people in Cancer Alley face disproportionate harms from the fossil fuel and petrochemical industries. In Georgia, Alabama, and Mississippi, Black women face higher cervical cancer mortality rates due to lack of healthcare insurance and access, as well as bias and discrimination in the health system. Racism, both interpersonal and societal, has driven major inequities in maternal and newborn health and mortality, with Black women dying at three to four times the rate of white women. Rates of preterm birth and infant mortality are twice as high for Black birthing people and babies than white ones.
The failure to account for the historic racial and gendered injustices of enslavement and its legacies has compounded the harm and fueled the persistence of racial inequality today. The legacy of chattel slavery, segregation, and systemic racism has resulted in a collective sense of dispossession and disempowerment, leaving many Black people and communities feeling like they do not own their own lives, work, or worth. This erasure of Black people’s historical agency and autonomy has had a devastating psychic toll, causing intergenerational trauma, anxiety, and feelings of powerlessness. Despite struggles to shift racial attitudes, civil rights era legislation from the 1960s took steps to address discrimination but did not adequately address the core of systemic racism or include any element of reparation, resulting in racial equity gaps. A holistic inquiry into these injustices and the ways subsequent policy has created and reinforced structures and systems that have prevented Black people from advancing is urgently needed, as is a plan to provide reparation and healing for these harms.
5. How have reparations been used to address injustices in other analogous contexts?
There are two particularly notable examples of governments attempting comprehensive efforts to provide reparations for large-scale atrocities and crimes. Germany has paid tens of billions of dollars in compensation to survivors of the Holocaust and their heirs in the decades since World War II, though the work remains unfinished.
In South Africa, the government established a Truth and Reconciliation Commission to reckon with the legacy of apartheid that gathered evidence, heard testimonies, and made recommendations for reparations and prosecutions related to apartheid-era crimes. There remains unfinished business for the South African Truth and Reconciliation Commission. Both reparations and prosecutions have yet to be administered to, and for, victims of apartheid in South Africa.
6. Who should receive reparations?
In the US, all Black people who are descended from people subjected to enslavement and who inevitably suffer its present-day legacies should be eligible for reparations.
Black people in the US are due reparations as worthy recipients of redress, justice, and reconciliation for atrocities and human rights violations experienced during and since chattel slavery. Although the slave economy built vast generational wealth for whites and propelled the US into global economic leadership, the US government has never adequately accounted for these wrongs, which continue to impact Black people via structural racism and pervasive racial inequality today.
While this text is focused on the idea of reparations for Black people in the US, it bears noting that Indigenous communities have faced centuries of displacement, violence, and cultural erasure due to colonization and US policies. The case for reparations is essential here as well—and appropriate reparations in that context might take a very different form.
The conversation around reparations is ongoing and involves not only consideration of historical injustices, but also current disparities and the potential for reconciliation and healing within society.
7. What form should reparations take?
One historical reference point often cited is the promise of “40 acres and a mule,” a post-Civil War proposal to provide land and resources to formerly enslaved individuals to help establish economic independence. In the US, modern reparations discourse builds on this idea.
Reparations can take various forms, including direct financial compensation, land restitution, or social services, aimed at restoring dignity and opportunity to affected communities. Reparations could also take the form of scholarship programs; funding memorials; and targeted investments in health, community infrastructure, education, and economic opportunities. By combining direct financial restitution with systemic changes, reparations could address the historical injustices of enslavement and ongoing inequities. Regardless of the form reparations take, they should always be decided in consultation with affected community members.
8. Has the United States granted reparations before?
The US government has provided reparations to Japanese Americans and some Indigenous Nations. It has also paid reparations to Jewish Holocaust survivors deported by France and their living relatives, pursuant to a scheme funded by the French government.
During World War II, Japanese Americans were forcibly removed from their homes and placed in internment camps. Some reparations have already been paid to this group through the Civil Liberties Act of 1988, which acknowledged the injustice and provided compensation in the form of $20,000 to survivors. Japanese American internment camp survivors, have voiced support of H.R. 40, a bill that would create a reparations commission, described in detail below.
The US government has never provided reparations for Black enslavement and its legacies. In some discrete instances, states have been forced to pay nominally for losses—such as in reconciliation of the 1923 Rosewood Massacre—but those reparations were not sufficient to remedy the harms done. Activists and advocates in Tulsa, Oklahoma, have been working tirelessly to get reparations granted to the remaining survivors of the 1921 Tulsa Race Massacre, one of the worst incidents of racial violence in US history. In hours, decades of Black prosperity and millions of dollars in hard-earned wealth were wiped out by a violent white mob. No one was ever held accountable, and no reparations have been paid to Black survivors of the massacre and descendants of victims.
9. What are the avenues to achieve reparations?
The US should address one of its foundational and most egregious human rights violations: the institution of chattel slavery and its living legacies.
- Federal
Executive
The president can establish a commission to study and develop reparations proposals for Black people by executive order. There is strong support among the public and within US Congress for the creation of a federal reparations commission to study the legacy of enslavement.
Legislative
In the last four decades, there have been federal legislative attempts to establish a commission to investigate the legacy of enslavement and its ongoing harms, as well as come up with proposals to Congress for redress and repair. Congress has the power to bring to the floor and pass H.R. 40, a proposal to set up a commission that would study the reparations issue that is described in detail below. In 2022, H.R. 40 had more support than ever with 217 members of Congress committing to vote yes if it came to the floor for a vote, the first time in the bill’s 32-year history. Still, Congress has failed to act.
States & Municipalities
Various local governments and states have begun to explore and implement their own reparative measures, described in Question 11 below.
Private Institutions
Some private institutions, including universities and churches, have begun to implement their own reparations plans as part of a broader commitment to addressing historical injustices and promoting racial equity. Georgetown University established a fund to support the descendants of enslaved individuals who were sold by the university in the 19th century, committing financial resources to scholarships and community initiatives. Similarly, the Episcopal Church has issued a formal apology and established reparative measures aimed at addressing its historical involvement in chattel slavery. These efforts reflect a growing recognition among private entities of the need to confront their pasts and take active steps toward rectifying the inequalities perpetuated by their historical practices, signaling a commitment to justice and empowerment for affected communities.
10. What are H.R. 40 and H.R. 414?
House Resolution 40 (H.R. 40) would establish an expert commission to study the legacy of enslavement and how the failure to address harms stemming from it have resulted in huge racial disparities between white and Black people in such areas as the ability to accumulate wealth; to access health care, education, housing and employment opportunities; environmental outcomes; and policing and the criminal legal system. It would recommend proposals for how to provide repair, in consultation with impacted communities. Like the commission that investigated the forced relocation and wrongful internment of Japanese Americans during World War II, H.R. 40 can help pave the way for a critical and truthful reckoning and accounting for past harms and the present harms that flow from them.
H.R. 40 was first brought to the floor by the late US Congressman John Conyers in 1989 and then reintroduced every year until his retirement in 2017, with no voting actions ever taken. It was reintroduced by the late US Congresswoman Sheila Jackson Lee in 2019 and received a record-number 196 co-sponsors and 21 additional secured “yes” votes during the 117th Legislative Session. Congresswoman Ayanna Pressley later took up the mantle of H.R. 40 and reintroduced the bill in February 2025.
In May 2023, Congresswoman Cori Bush introduced H.R. 414, also known as the “Reparations Now Resolution” bill, arguing that the federal government must provide reparations to descendants of enslaved Black people and people of African descent. The resolution outlines various forms it argued reparations could take to address the legacy of enslavement in the US and was recently reintroduced by Congresswoman Summer Lee. The resolution also supports existing reparatory justice efforts such as H.R. 40 and a resolution introduced by Congresswoman Barbara Lee urging the establishment of a US Commission on Truth, Racial Healing, and Transformation.
Human Rights Watch has long supported the development of broader reparations plans to account for the cruelty of chattel slavery and subsequent harm and supports H.R. 40. Passing H.R. 40 would be a good first step to accounting for the impact of enslavement and addressing the ongoing harm to Black people.
11. What are some cities and states actively working on reparations?
In the absence of federal action, many cities and states are taking matters into their own hands. The city council in Asheville, North Carolina approved reparations for its African American residents, focusing on economic development and affordable housing, and apologized for its history of chattel slavery. Evanston, Illinois went even further, not only approving reparations, but setting aside tax revenue from newly legalized marijuana sales to provide financial assistance to Black residents for housing, acknowledging past discriminatory practices. Burlington, Vermont established a commission to study reparations. The mayor of Providence, Rhode Island signed an executive order creating a city commission to develop recommendations on how to facilitate reparations payments. The Town Council in Amherst, Massachusetts created a fund to pay reparations to Black residents. Other cities working towards reparations include, but are not limited to, Tullahasee, Oklahoma; Greenbelt, Maryland; Detroit, Michigan; and Wilmington, Delaware. And in 2020, the governor of California signed into law a bill establishing the state’s own H.R. 40-style commission. Washington state passed the Covenant Homeownership Program, which offers home buying assistance to first-time homebuyers of color whose families experienced housing discrimination before 1968. In 2023, the New York State Community Commission on Reparations Remedies was established and tasked with examining the legacy of enslavement, subsequent discrimination against people of African descent, and the impact these forces continue to have in the present day.
12. How can I get involved in the reparations movement?
Getting involved in the reparations movement requires a commitment to learning about the history of injustice, engaging with communities, and advocating for policy changes. Here are 10 steps you can consider:
- Educate yourself: Learn about the history of reparations, particularly in the context of your state and city. Read books, articles, and research papers, and follow relevant discussions on social media. Understanding the arguments for and against reparations, and relevant nuance, can deepen your understanding and engagement.
- Connect with organizations: Reach out to organizations that are actively working within the reparations movement, such as local grassroots groups, national organizations, and advocacy groups focused on racial equity and justice. Organizations such as Get Free, BLIS Collective, the National Coalition of Blacks for Reparations in America (N’COBRA), and the Reparation Education Project may provide resources and opportunities to engage.
- Attend events: Look for talks, workshops, or community meetings focused on reparations. Participating in events can help you network with others in the movement and provide insight into ongoing initiatives.
- Volunteer: Offer your time and skills to organizations fighting for reparations. Whether they need help with fundraising, outreach, or research. Your contributions can be valuable.
- Advocate: Use your voice to advocate for reparations within your community. Write articles, engage in discussions, and use social media to raise awareness about the issue. Engage with community leaders about reparative justice.
- Support policy initiatives: Keep an eye on legislative efforts related to reparations and consider supporting bills or initiatives that align with your values by attending hearings and events. You can also contact your local representatives to express your support for reparative measures.
- Engage in local initiatives: Look for local reparations initiatives or discussion around local policies that address historical injustices. These could include community reparative programs or educational initiatives that focus on equity.
- Join educational campaigns: Participate in campaigns aimed at educating others about the importance of reparations. This could involve hosting discussions, creating content, or organizing workshops in schools or community centers.
- Practice solidarity: Stand in solidarity with Black and other impacted communities. This could involve supporting other social justice movements that intersect with the reparations movement. This can also include speaking to the people around you about the history of enslavement, the need for reparations, and providing them with resources.
- Stay informed and adaptive: The reparations movement is evolving, so continue to educate yourself about current developments, strategies, and best practices.
Your involvement can be tailored to suit your strengths and commitments, and every effort counts toward building a more equitable society.
