KEMETIC MINDS
Weekly Reparations Report — July 10, 2026 | Covering July 03 – July 10, 2026
📜 This Week in Reparations
Every Friday at noon, Kemetic Minds publishes a comprehensive review of reparations legislation, community activism, economic analysis, and political developments from the past seven days — local, state, and national. This is your reparations intelligence briefing.
📰 This Week’s Reparations Headlines
www.bing.com • Sat, 04 Jul 2026
What to Black Americans is USA’s 250th under the presidency of Donald Trump?
From the legacy of slavery to today’s battles over voting rights, education, and reparations, Black leaders say America’s work is …
www.bing.com • Mon, 06 Jul 2026
“We Kept the Receipts” turns reparations into an immersive cultural demand
Reclamation Day in Brooklyn featured “We Kept the Receipts,” a reparations installation tied to H.R. 40. Learn how it connects art and policy at REVOLT.
Executive Summary
This week, Black leaders reflected on the state of America as it approaches its 250th anniversary, with a particular focus on the presidency of Donald Trump, highlighting the ongoing struggles of Black Americans from the legacy of slavery to current battles over voting rights, education, and reparations, as noted in an article. The week also saw the feature of “We Kept the Receipts,” a reparations installation tied to H.R. 40, during Reclamation Day in Brooklyn, which connects art and policy, as reported.
These events underscore the ongoing demand for reparations and the creative ways in which the community is pushing for recognition and action. By tying art installations to policy initiatives like H.R. 40, there’s a clear effort to keep the conversation about reparations at the forefront of national discourse.
Legislative Update
The reparations installation “We Kept the Receipts” was notably tied to H.R. 40, indicating continued community support and awareness for the bill. However, no new legislative action was reported this week regarding H.R. 40 or any state reparations bills.
Community and Economic Developments
No new community or economic developments related to reparations, such as redlining settlements or local reparations programs, were reported this week.
Analysis
The stories from this week highlight the multifaceted approach to achieving reparations, from reflecting on the historical and current state of Black America under presidencies like Donald Trump’s, to leveraging art and culture as in “We Kept the Receipts” to demand policy change like H.R. 40. This approach keeps the conversation vibrant and inclusive, ensuring that the demand for reparations remains a central issue in American discourse.
The use of immersive cultural events and installations to raise awareness about reparations and connect them to specific policy initiatives is particularly noteworthy. It signifies a strategic effort to engage a broader audience and to personalize the reparations movement, making it more relatable and urgent to a wider segment of the population.
Video: WATCH: House Judiciary Committee hearing on reparations for Black Americans. Source: Congressional hearing via YouTube.
Video: California Legislative Black Caucus unveils 2025 reparations bill package. Source: California Legislature via YouTube.
📜 H.R. 40 Legislative Tracker
| Bill | Status & Notes |
| H.R. 40 119th Congress |
Referred to House Judiciary Committee — Subcommittee on the Constitution and Limited Government. No floor vote scheduled. Sponsored by Rep. Sheila Jackson Lee (TX-18) and carried forward by Rep. Barbara Lee; 198 co-sponsors as of most recent public count. Track at congress.gov → |
| S. 40 (Senate companion) 119th Congress |
Referred to Senate Judiciary Committee. Senate companion bill; no hearing scheduled. |
| California AB 3121 descendants Reparations Task Force |
California Reparations Task Force delivered final report 2023; state legislature debating implementation bills in 2025–2026 session. Multiple bills pending including direct payments, community wealth funds, and discriminatory law repeal. CA DOJ tracker → |
Table updated weekly. Source: congress.gov, California DOJ, National Conference of State Legislatures.
✊ Take Action This Week: Reparations
Local Actions
- Attend your city council or county commission meeting and ask your local government where it stands on a municipal reparations commission. Over 20 U.S. cities including Evanston, IL; San Francisco, CA; and Detroit, MI have passed reparations programs or studies. Find your council calendar at your city’s .gov website.
- Contact your local NAACP branch to ask what reparations advocacy is underway in your county. Find your branch at naacp.org.
- Participate in local oral history projects documenting community experiences with redlining, discriminatory lending, and generational wealth loss. Contact your public library’s local history department.
- Support Black-owned banks and CDFIs (Community Development Financial Institutions) in your area. Moving deposits is a direct wealth-building action. Black Enterprise maintains a directory.
State Actions
- Look up your state reparations legislation by searching your state legislature’s bill tracking site for “reparations,” “racial equity,” or “redlining.” Contact your state senator and representative to ask where they stand.
- If your state has a reparations task force or commission (California, Illinois, New York, and others do), attend or submit public comment at their public hearings. Many accept written testimony by email.
- Engage your state attorney general’s office on discriminatory lending enforcement. Many state AGs have consumer protection or civil rights divisions that investigate redlining and predatory practices.
- Support state-level H.R. 40 equivalents — bills establishing state study commissions. Even a study commission creates a public record and political accountability.
National Actions
- Call your U.S. Representative and both U.S. Senators and ask them to co-sponsor H.R. 40 (the Commission to Study and Develop Reparation Proposals for African Americans). Find your representatives at congress.gov/members/find-your-member. Congressional switchboard: 202-224-3121.
- Sign and share National African American Reparations Commission (NAARC) petitions and follow their campaign updates at reparationscomm.org.
- Support National Coalition of Blacks for Reparations in America (N’COBRA), one of the oldest national reparations advocacy organizations. ncobraonline.org.
- Participate in comment periods when federal agencies (HUD, Treasury, CFPB) open public comment windows on housing equity, lending discrimination, or racial economic gap policies. regulations.gov lists all open federal comment periods.
- Vote and organize voter registration drives in your community. Electoral accountability at every level of government — school board through Senate — is the enforcement mechanism for all reparations legislation. Our full voting rights analysis explains what is at stake.
🧠 Kemetic Minds Analysis
Reparations is not a future question. It is a present accounting. The racial wealth gap between Black and white families in the United States is not a natural outcome of different choices — it is the documented result of specific government policies applied for specific purposes over specific decades. Redlining, exclusion from New Deal programs, urban renewal demolition of Black business districts, denial of GI Bill benefits, contract land sales, and the direct theft of property during massacres like Tulsa 1921 and Rosewood 1923 are not matters of historical controversy. They are documented in federal archives, insurance records, and academic literature.
The question before the country is not whether the harm was real. It is whether the government that caused and enabled the harm will take responsibility for it. H.R. 40 does not mandate a payment — it mandates a study. The fact that even a study has been blocked in committee for over 30 years tells you everything you need to know about political will. Our coverage of voting rights under siege, civil rights enforcement rollbacks, and underreported hate crimes provides essential context for why reparations advocacy requires simultaneous defense of the political structures that make legislation possible.
The accounting is incomplete. The work is unfinished. Subscribe, share, and show up.
References
- U.S. Congress. (119th Congress). H.R. 40 — Commission to Study and Develop Reparation Proposals for African Americans Act. congress.gov
- California Department of Justice. (2023). AB 3121 Reparations Task Force Final Report. oag.ca.gov
- City of Evanston, Illinois. (2021–present). Reparations Program. cityofevanston.org
- Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System. (2022). Survey of Consumer Finances: Median family net worth by race. federalreserve.gov
- National African American Reparations Commission. (n.d.). NAARC 10-Point Program. reparationscomm.org
- National Coalition of Blacks for Reparations in America (N’COBRA). (n.d.). ncobraonline.org
- NAACP. (n.d.). Find your local NAACP unit. naacp.org
- U.S. House of Representatives. (n.d.). Find your Member of Congress. congress.gov
- National Conference of State Legislatures. (n.d.). Reparations legislation tracker. ncsl.org
- C-SPAN. (2021). H.R. 40 hearing: Testimony on reparations for African Americans [Video]. YouTube via C-SPAN
Methodology: This weekly report draws on RSS feeds from Black-owned and civil rights-focused news organizations, federal government databases (congress.gov, justice.gov), academic sources, and established press. No Wikipedia sources are used. Where video is embedded, credit is given to the original broadcaster. Pexels images are licensed for editorial use. This report publishes every Friday at 12:00 PM Central.
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