This is an opinion column.

Rev. Robert Turner keeps walking. Walking for reparations. Walking for H.R. 40.

The bill that would establish a Congressional commission to study proposals for reparations for African American descendants of enslaved ancestors was initially introduced in the U.S. House of Representatives 24 years ago by former Texas Congressman John Conyers. It’s been re-re-re-reintroduced in every Congress since, most recently by another Texan, Rep. Sheila Jackson. The bill’s Senate companion, S. 40, is shepherded by Sen. Cory Booker of New Jersey.

Neither bill has ever been brought forth for a vote. The Senate version languishes in the pile that clutters Sen. Mitch McConnell’s desk, the pile where good ideas go to die.

So, Turner walks.

In 2019, on Juneteenth—the federal holiday commemorating the day, June 19, 1865, when the 250,000 enslaved Black men, women, and children in west Texas learned they were free, two years after President Abraham Lincoln signed the Emancipation Proclamation—an historic hearing on reparations was convened by the House Judiciary Committee’s Subcommittee on the Constitution, Civil Rights, and Civil Liberties. Supporters of reparations were heard, as were those staunchly against it.

Heard—yet no action has since been taken.

Related: Johnson: I struggled to celebrate Juneteenth

So, Turner walks.

Every month, the tall Tuskegee native and pastor of Empowerment Temple AME Church in Baltimore walks 40 miles from his church to the fence in front of the White House to give light to the call for President Joe Biden to sign an executive order establishing the commission.

A commission, not a check. Both of which remain unsigned.

So, Turner walks.

Early last Sunday morning, at 3:45 a.m., began walking. This time, from the Selma side the Edmond Pettus Bridge, under the light of a full moon. Just a few hours before Biden helped commemorate the 58th year since marchers risked their lives to walk across that bridge. To walk to Alabama’s capital city 54 miles away to demand equitable voting rights.

Turner missed the annual observance, missed the scrum of politicians and activists that lock arms in lockstep and cross the bridge. He stood at the foot of the bridge all but alone.

And began walking.

Not long before, he wasn’t sure if he’d walk. He’d left Atlanta in a rental car before realizing he’d left his luggage behind. His luggage containing the strong, comfortable shoes Turner usually wears for walks. He’d also been let down by a group that had promised to walk with him, yet upon his arrival said they would not.

“They were really trying to discourage me from coming, honestly, saying nobody knew about it and nobody would show up,” Turner says. “While all that’s true. That’s not necessary. It’s not a contingency for me to act. If the press is there, wonderful, but if the press is not there, I’m still going to do what God called me to do.”

And yet last Sunday, Turner wondered if God was whispering to him, Come back later.

“I was like, ‘What is going on,’ ‘Is this a sign?” he said.

He prayed on the questions and went to sleep.

“God woke me up right on time to march,” he said. “I was like, ‘God, I don’t have this, I don’t have that.’ He said, ‘But you got Me.’”

So, Turner walked. Fifty-four miles.

“Proverbs 29 verse 25 says those who trust in the Lord shall be safe,” he said. “Sometimes, the things we think we need, we don’t.”

There were angels, of course. Turner’s mother rose early, bought her son a pair of shoes made for walking, and drove from Tuskegee to deliver them to him.

“The first eight hours in regular tennis shoes were terrible,” Turner said with a laugh, “The last twelve, I was good to go.”

RELATED: Rev. Turner to Tuberville: ‘Criminals were the ones who enslaved Black people’

Turner was escorted through Lowndes County by a sheriff’s deputy. It’s still known by many as “bloody Lowndes” because of the myriad attacks on Blacks there who organized their own political party in the 1960s and ultimately secured a bit of political power, though it was short-lived. (Look out for my podcast series on this history later this year.)

Turner was also joined for some strides by iconic Selma activist Faya (and indeed at 77, she remains fiery) Rose Toure.

“Other people showed up I’d never met in my life just to walk with me,” Turner said. “IT was just remarkable. When you trust in the Lord, He’ll just send people to you.”

Turner was picked up by car before reaching Montgomery to attend a reparations rally in the city at which he’d promised to speak. When it was done, his mother (with the new shoes) and father drove him back to the very spot he’d been picked up, deep in Lowndes County.

“You don’t want me to let you off right here?” his mother asked along the way.

“No mom, I gotta go back to where I stopped.”

“You don’t want to start right here?”

“No, I gotta go to where I stopped.”

In front of a brown house across the street from a long-deceased gas station with a church sitting behind it.

Turner is laughing now. “Even my dad said, ‘That’s a long way.’”

RELATED: Civil rights leaders urge Biden to support reparations study ahead of Selma visit

When he arrived back in Baltimore, Turner propped his feet up. Soon, his 10-year-old son started massaging them, using techniques he learned from a YouTube video.

“Let me tell you what: God knows what you need.”

So, Turner will keep walking. For reparations. “For repair,” he says.

More columns by Roy S. Johnson

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Birmingham-Southern president reaches out to HBCU peers for support in quest for $37.5 million bailout

Roy S. Johnson is a Pulitzer Prize finalist for commentary and winner of the Edward R. Murrow prize for podcasts: “Unjustifiable,” co-hosted with John Archibald. His column appears in AL.com, as well as the Lede. Reach him at [email protected], follow him at twitter.com/roysj, or on Instagram @roysj