What is HR 40? It’s the most important piece of reparations legislation in American history — and most people have never heard of it. If you care about reparations, racial justice, or Black economic equity, HR 40 is the bill you need to understand right now. What HR 40 Actually…
David McNally Says Atlantic Slavery Was Not Pre-Capitalist. It Was Capitalism.
Was Atlantic slavery a capitalist system or a pre-capitalist one? In a recent conversation, historian David McNally argues that Atlantic slavery was not outside capitalism at all. It was a distinct capitalist system built on enslaved labor, commodity production, and surplus value. McNally’s new book, Slavery and Capitalism: A New…
Sir Lenny Henry’s Reparations Push Is Forcing Britain to Face Its Slave Trade Legacy
Sir Lenny Henry is putting Britain’s slavery reparations debate back on the front page. In a 2025 House of Parliament summit, Henry, Marcus Ryder, MPs, and community leaders argued that reparations are not fringe politics, they are Britain’s unfinished business. Lenny Henry’s Reparations Push Is Getting Louder The conversation centers…
Alameda County Approves Reparations Action Plan
On Tuesday, the Alameda County Board of Supervisors voted unanimously to accept a sweeping 170-page Reparations Action Plan and to establish a permanent standing committee to oversee its implementation. The plan does not include direct cash payments for most residents. Instead, it targets systemic inequities through 44 phased policy recommendations…
Reparations Is a Love Story. Dr. Johns and Dr. Hunter Explain Why.
Dr. David J. Johns is the CEO and Executive Director of the National Black Justice Collective, the nation’s only civil rights organization working at the intersection of Blackness and queerness. Dr. Marcus Anthony Hunter is a sociologist, the first person to tweet #BlackLivesMatter, and author of Radical Reparations: Healing the…
Haiti Paid France for Its Own Freedom. That’s Why Haiti Is Poor.
Michael Imhotep is a historian, researcher, and founder of the African History Network. He teaches a 10-week course connecting the Haitian Revolution to the U.S. Civil War, the Louisiana Purchase, and the Black Power Movement. His breakdown of the New York Times 2022 investigative series cuts straight to why Haiti…
Is Evanston’s Reparations Program Legal? Madiba Dennie Breaks It Down on Freedman Friday
On Juneteenth 2026, the Trump administration did not celebrate. It intervened. The Department of Justice — under Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche — filed to join a lawsuit aimed at shutting down the Evanston, Illinois reparations program, the first municipal reparations program in American history. The timing was not lost…
Michigan Lawmakers Introduce Reparative Justice Package on Eve of Juneteenth 2026
On the eve of Juneteenth 2026, members of the Michigan Legislative Black Caucus, community advocates, and descendants of the enslaved gathered in Lansing to announce something that rarely happens in statehouses anymore: a serious, specific, legislative response to the unfinished business of American freedom. The package does not promise reparations…
Marc Lamont Hill Office Hours: Dr. Roger Davidson on Juneteenth, the Civil War, and What Freedom Actually Means
Marc Lamont Hill hosted historian and Bowie State University Associate Professor Dr. Roger A. Davidson Jr. for an Office Hours deep dive into the history America oversimplifies every time it goes on sale at Target. The conversation ranged from the military mechanics of how emancipation actually happened, to Lincoln’s real…
