Urging the establishment of a United States Commission on Truth, Racial Healing, and Transformation.

[Congressional Bills 119th Congress]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office]
[H. Con. Res. 37 Introduced in House (IH)]

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119th CONGRESS
  1st Session
H. CON. RES. 37

Urging the establishment of a United States Commission on Truth, Racial
                      Healing, and Transformation.

_______________________________________________________________________

                    IN THE HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES

                             June 12, 2025

  Ms. Crockett (for herself, Ms. Simon, Ms. Balint, Mrs. Beatty, Ms.
 Brown, Ms. Brownley, Mr. Carson, Ms. Castor of Florida, Ms. DeGette,
  Ms. DelBene, Mr. Deluzio, Mr. Doggett, Mr. Espaillat, Mr. Evans of
  Pennsylvania, Mr. Frost, Mr. Garamendi, Mr. Garcia of Illinois, Mr.
 Green of Texas, Mr. Jackson of Illinois, Ms. Jayapal, Mr. Johnson of
Georgia, Ms. Kamlager-Dove, Ms. Kelly of Illinois, Mr. Khanna, Ms. Lee
 of Pennsylvania, Ms. McCollum, Mr. McGovern, Ms. Moore of Wisconsin,
  Ms. Norton, Ms. Omar, Mr. Pallone, Ms. Pressley, Mrs. Ramirez, Ms.
 Strickland, Mr. Thanedar, Mr. Thompson of Mississippi, Ms. Tlaib, Mr.
   Vargas, Ms. Velazquez, and Ms. Williams of Georgia) submitted the
following concurrent resolution; which was referred to the Committee on
                             the Judiciary

_______________________________________________________________________

                         CONCURRENT RESOLUTION

Urging the establishment of a United States Commission on Truth, Racial
                      Healing, and Transformation.

Whereas the first ship carrying enslaved Africans to what is now known as the
        United States of America arrived in 1619;
Whereas that event more than 400 years ago was significant not only because it
        ushered in the institution of chattel slavery of African Americans, but
        also because it facilitated the systematic oppression of all people of
        color that has been a devastating and insufficiently understood and
        acknowledged aspect of our Nation's history over those past 400-plus
        years, and that has left a legacy of that oppression that haunts our
        Nation to this day;
Whereas the institution of chattel slavery in the United States subjugated
        African Americans for nearly 250 years, fractured our Nation, and made a
        mockery of its founding principle that ``all men are created equal'';
Whereas the signing of the Constitution of the United States failed to end
        slavery and oppressions against African Americans and other people of
        color, thus embedding in society the belief in the myth of a hierarchy
        of human value based on superficial physical characteristics such as
        skin color and facial features, and resulting in purposeful and
        persistent racial inequities in education, health care, employment,
        Social Security and veteran benefits, land ownership, financial
        assistance, food security, wages, voting rights, and the justice system;
Whereas that oppression denied opportunity and mobility to African Americans and
        other people of color within the United States, resulting in stolen
        labor worth billions of dollars while ultimately forestalling landmark
        contributions that African Americans and other people of color would
        make in science, arts, commerce, and public service;
Whereas Reconstruction represented a significant but constrained moment of
        advances for Black rights as epitomized by the Freedman's Bureau, which
        negotiated labor contracts for ex-enslaved people but failed to secure
        their own land for them;
Whereas the brutal overthrow of Reconstruction failed all individuals in the
        United States by failing to ensure the safety and security of African
        Americans and by emboldening States and municipalities in both the North
        and South to enact numerous laws and policies to stymie the
        socioeconomic mobility and political voice of freed Blacks, thus
        maintaining their subservience to Whites;
Whereas Reconstruction, the civil rights movement, and other efforts to redress
        the grievances of marginalized people were sabotaged, both intentionally
        and unintentionally, by those in power, thus rendering the
        accomplishments of those efforts transitory and unsustainable, and
        further embedding the racial hierarchy in society;
Whereas examples of government actions directed against populations of color
        (referred to in this resolution as ``discriminatory government
        actions'') include--

    (1) the creation of the Federal Housing Administration, which adopted
specific policies designed to incentivize residential segregation;

    (2) the enactment of legislation creating the Social Security program,
for which most African Americans were purposely rendered ineligible during
its first two decades;

    (3) the Servicemen's Readjustment Act of 1944 (commonly known as the GI
Bill of Rights; 58 Stat. 284, chapter 268), which left administration of
its programs to the States, thus enabling blatant discrimination against
African-American veterans;

    (4) the Fair Labor Standards Act of 1938, which allowed labor unions to
discriminate based on race;

    (5) subprime lending aimed purposefully at families of color;

    (6) disenfranchisement of Native Americans, who, until 1924, were
denied citizenship on land Native Americans had occupied for millennia;

    (7) Federal Indian Boarding School Policy during the 19th and 20th
centuries, the purpose of which was to ``civilize'' Native children through
methods intended to eradicate Native cultures, traditions, and languages;

    (8) land policies toward Indian Tribes, such as the allotment policy,
which caused the loss of over 90,000,000 acres of Tribal lands, even though
two-thirds of that acreage was guaranteed to Indian Tribes by treaties and
other Federal laws, and similar unjustified land grabs from Indian Tribes
that occurred regionally throughout the late 1800s and into the termination
era in the 1950s and 1960s;

    (9) the involuntary removal of Mexicans and United States citizens of
Mexican descent through large-scale discriminatory deportation programs in
the 1930s and 1950s;

    (10) the United States annexation of Puerto Rico, which made Puerto
Ricans citizens of the United States without affording them voting rights;

    (11) racial discrimination against Latino Americans, which has forced
Latino Americans to fight continuously for equal access to employment,
housing, health care, financial services, and education;

    (12) the Act entitled ``An Act to execute certain treaty stipulations
relating to Chinese'', approved May 6, 1882 (commonly known as the Chinese
Exclusion Act; 22 Stat. 58, chapter 126), which effectively halted
immigration from China and barred Chinese immigrants from becoming citizens
of the United States, and which was the first instance of xenophobic
legislation signed into law specifically targeting a specific group of
people based on ethnicity;

    (13) the treatment of Japanese Americans, despite no evidence of
disloyalty, as suspect and traitorous in the very country they helped to
build, leading most notably to the mass incarceration of Japanese Americans
beginning in 1942;

    (14) the conspiracy to overthrow the Kingdom of Hawaii and annex the
land of the Kingdom of Hawaii, without the consent of or compensation to
the Native Hawaiian people of Hawaii; and

    (15) the United States history of colonialism in the Pacific, which has
resulted in economic, health, and educational disparities among other
inequities, for people in United States territories, as well as independent
nations with which the United States has treaty obligations;

Whereas those discriminatory government actions, among other government policies
        that have had racially disparate impacts, have disproportionately barred
        African Americans and other people of color from building wealth, thus
        limiting potential capital and exacerbating the racial wealth gap;
Whereas research has shown that the persistent racial wealth gap has had a
        significant negative impact on other racial disparities, such as the
        achievement gap, disparities in school dropout rates, income gaps,
        disparities in home ownership rates, health outcome disparities, and
        disparities in incarceration rates;
Whereas United States civic leaders and foundations have spearheaded critical
        efforts to advance racial healing, understanding, and transformation
        within the United States, recognizing that it is in our collective
        national interest to urgently address the unhealed, entrenched divisions
        that will severely undermine our democracy if they are allowed to
        continue to exist;
Whereas many of the most far-reaching victories for racial healing in the United
        States have been greatly enhanced by the involvement, support, and
        dedication of individuals from any and all racial groups;
Whereas, at the same time, much of the progress toward racial healing and racial
        equity in the United States has been limited or reversed by our failure
        to address the root cause of racism, the belief in the myth of a
        hierarchy of human value based on superficial physical characteristics
        such as skin color and facial features;
Whereas the United States institution of slavery, as well as other examples
        enumerated in this resolution, represents intentional and blatant
        violations of the most basic right of every individual in the United
        States to a free and decent life;
Whereas the consequences of oppression against people of color have cascaded for
        centuries, across generations, beyond the era of active enslavement,
        imperiling for descendants of slaves and other targets of oppression
        what should have otherwise been the right of every individual in the
        United States to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness;
Whereas more than 40 countries have reckoned with historical injustice and its
        aftermath through forming truth and reconciliation commissions to move
        toward restorative justice and to return dignity to their citizens;
Whereas for three decades there has been a growing movement inside and outside
        Congress to have the Federal Government develop material remedies for
        the institution of slavery, including through a Commission to Study and
        Develop Reparation Proposals for African Americans described in H.R. 40,
        119th Congress, as introduced on January 3, 2025, and S. 40, 119th
        Congress, as introduced on January 9, 2023;
Whereas the formation of a United States Commission on Truth, Racial Healing,
        and Transformation does not supplant the formation of a Commission to
        Study and Develop Reparation Proposals for African Americans, but rather
        complements that effort; and
Whereas contemporary social science, medical science, and the rapidly expanding
        use of artificial intelligence and social media reveal the costs and
        potential threats to our democracy if we continue to allow unhealed,
        entrenched divisions to be ignored and exploited: Now, therefore, be
    Resolved by the House of Representatives (the Senate concurring),
That Congress--
            (1) affirms, more than 400 years after the arrival of the
        first slave ship to the United States, that the Nation owes a
        long-overdue debt of remembrance to not only those who lived
        through the egregious injustices enumerated in this resolution,
        but also to their descendants; and
            (2) urges the establishment of a United States Commission
        on Truth, Racial Healing, and Transformation to properly
        acknowledge, memorialize, and be a catalyst for progress
        toward--
                    (A) jettisoning the belief in a hierarchy of human
                value;
                    (B) embracing our common humanity; and
                    (C) permanently eliminating persistent racial
                inequities.
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