In May 2019, the American Civil Liberties Union formally announced its support of reparations for African Americans for the practices and vestiges of slavery.
The ACLU and National African American Reparations Commission (NAARC) partnered to host a forum on reparations on Nov. 2, 2019 in Charleston, South Carolina. The goal was to further the passage of H.R. 40.
“Our country was built on the polluted bedrock of slavery. We will not be at our strongest until that pollution is fully understood and cleaned, and our system of democracy repaired,” said ACLU deputy legal director Jeffery Robinson. “The type of detailed study proposed in H.R. 40 has never been done, and it remains the only mechanism to fully achieve a fair and just solution on the issue of reparations.”
