The House Judiciary Committee voted Wednesday to recommend the creation of a committee to consider reparations for slavery. The reparations bill was first proposed over 30 years ago but never received a committee vote — until this week. This is the bill’s sponsor, Texas Congressmember Sheila Jackson Lee.

Rep. Sheila Jackson Lee: “Do not ignore the pain, the history and the reasonableness of this commission. This is a governmental commission, a commission that establishes the parameters of a study that provide the roadmap for the truth of the brutality and the onerous and terrible burden placed on African Americans and this nation by slavery.”