In the year 1619, the first slave ship arrived on the shores of what is now the United States; the colonists of Virginia purchased all of the Africans on board. The 1619 Project--a new initiative created by journalist Nikole Hannah-Jones and sponsored by the New York Times--marks the 400th anniversary of that event by re-examining American slavery and its ongoing legacy. Scroll through the project website to find numerous stories and essays about race and slavery in the U.S., most of them by African-American writers.
On Juneteenth (June 19) 2019, a subcommittee of the House Judiciary Committee met to discuss H.B. 40, "Commission to Study and Develop Reparation Proposals for African-Americans Act," a bill that proposes creating a commission to study the possibility of providing reparations to African-Americans.
Ta-Nehisi Coates sparked a national conversation about reparations with an extensively-researched 2014 article on the topic for The Atlantic. He was invited to speak at the June 19 subcommittee hearings; this video, provided by Politico, shows his testimony.