Kamm Howard is internationally respected for his reparations work. In 2014, he was invited to speak on the “new paradigm of reparations activism,” at the 8th Pan African Conference in Johannesburg, South Africa. Also, that year, he also presented in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia on the same subject.
In 2016, he was a key organizer for the United States visit of the United Nations Working Group of Experts for People of African Descent. He particularly was the co-leader to their Chicago visit, were the Working Group proclaimed it was the most organized visit in all their work globally. As a result of Kamm’s leadership and insistence that reparations be the center issue of the UN visit, the United Nations report that resulted began Its recommendations with for the United States to amend its centuries of gross human rights violations against people of African Descent, she must engage this community with reparations.
In 2017 as a member of the National African American Reparations Commission, a commission of reparations scholars. attorneys, clergy, and grassroots leaders, Kamm was chosen to lead the team to re-vise HR 40, the federal reparations bill. Acting also as the lead writer of the new bill, the emphasis was changed from a study bill to a remedy bill. Codified in the new bill are the international reparations norm of full reparations: cessation, restitution, compensation, satisfaction, and rehabilitation.
Kamm is also a Life-Time Member of N’COBRA, the National Coalition of Blacks for Reparations in America, joining in 2006, He served in many leadership positions starting 2008 as Board Member-At-Large, Legislations Commission Chair(2009-2022), Midwest Regional Representative (2016) and National Male Co-Chair (2017-2022)
Currently Kamm is working with United States Congresswoman Sheila Jackson Lee and the Reparations Strategy Group, to strategize on moving HR 40 into law. This work has led to over 220 members of Congress to cosponsor HR40 and its Senate companion bill, S40. This work has now positioned HR40 to be signed into law via a presidential executive order.
Additionally, Kamm Is working with Ald. Robin Rue Simmons, Director of First Repair. Ms Simmons, as an Evanston, IL alderman, led the first city to establish and deliver reparations resources to the local level in America.
In June of 2020, Kamm successfully led the work to pass the City of Chicago Subcommittee on Reparations, making Chicago the second city in America to establish a local governmental body to redress past harms against its Black citizens
Because of Ald. Simmons work, which has inspired state and local legislators around the country, Kamm recently a manual, “Laying the Foundation for Local Reparations: A Guide for Providing National Symmetry for Local Reparations Efforts.” This document has been used to inform the local reparations efforts across the United States. Finally.
After leaving N’COBRA, Kamm founded Reparations United, in 2022. Reparations United engages local communities nationally to share and build simultaneously around local reparations demands and focused local reparatory projects.
