[Congressional Record Volume 168, Number 125 (Wednesday, July 27, 2022)]
[House]
[Pages H7182-H7184]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




          ORIGINAL SLAVERY REMEMBRANCE DAY RESOLUTION OF 2021

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. Pursuant to House Resolution 1256, H. Res. 
517 is considered as agreed to.
  The text of the resolution is as follows:

[[Page H7183]]

  


                              H. Res. 517

       Whereas this resolution may be cited as the ``Original 
     Slavery Remembrance Day Resolution of 2021'';
       Whereas the House of Representatives recognizes August 20, 
     2021, as ``Slavery Remembrance Day'' and commemorates the 
     lives of all enslaved people while also condemning the act 
     and perpetuation of slavery in the United States of America 
     and across the world;
       Whereas we posthumously recognize the following Members of 
     Congress, who served during and after the Reconstruction era, 
     as honorary cosponsors of this resolution: the Honorable 
     Joseph Hayne Rainey (SC-01), Member of Congress from 1870 to 
     1879, Jefferson Franklin Long (GA-04), Member of Congress 
     from January 1871 to March 1871, Robert Carlos De Large (SC-
     02), Member of Congress from 1871 to 1873, Robert Brown 
     Elliott (SC-3), Member of Congress from 1871 to 1874, 
     Benjamin Sterling Turner (AL-01), Member of Congress from 
     1871 to 1873, Josiah Thomas Walls (FL-At Large), Member of 
     Congress from 1871 to 1876, Alanzo Jacob Ransier (SC-02), 
     Member of Congress from 1873 to 1875, Richard Harvey Cain 
     (SC-At Large), Member of Congress from 1873 to 1875 and 1877 
     to 1879, John Roy Lynch (MS-06), Member of Congress from 1873 
     to 1877 and 1882 to 1883, James Thomas Rapier (AL-02), Member 
     of Congress from 1873 to 1875, Jeremiah Haralson (AL-01), 
     Member of Congress from 1875 to 1877, John Adams Hyman (NC-
     02), Member of Congress from 1875 to 1877, Roberts Smalls 
     (SC-07), Member of Congress from 1875 to 1879 and 1882 to 
     1883 and 1884 to 1887, James Edward O'hara (NC-02), Member of 
     Congress from 1883 to 1887, Herney Plummer Cheatham (NC-02), 
     Member of Congress from 1889 to 1893, John Mercer Langston 
     (VA-04), Member of Congress from 1890 to 1891, Thomas Ezekiel 
     Miller, Member of Congress from 1890 to 1891, George 
     Washington Murray (SC-01), Member of Congress from 1893 to 
     1895 and 1896 to 1897, and George Henry White (NC-02), Member 
     of Congress from 1897 to 1901;
       Whereas, on August 20, 1619, the first 20 enslaved Africans 
     were brought to what is now Fort Monroe, then Point Comfort, 
     in Hampton, Virginia against their will;
       Whereas the House of Representatives recognizes August 20, 
     2021, as ``Slavery Remembrance Day'' and commemorates the 
     lives of all enslaved people while also condemning the act 
     and perpetuation of slavery in the United States of America 
     and across the world;
       Whereas African tribal chiefs captured, enslaved, and sold 
     their captives to transatlantic slave traders;
       Whereas, over the period of the Atlantic slave trade, from 
     approximately 1526 to 1867, millions of humans were abducted 
     and shipped from Africa, and 10,700,000 arrived in the 
     Americas as personal property;
       Whereas the majority of enslaved Africans brought to 
     British North America arrived between 1720 and 1780;
       Whereas about 6 percent of African captives were sent 
     directly to British North America;
       Whereas, by 1825, the population of the United States 
     included about one quarter of the people of African descent 
     in what has been called the New World;
       Whereas the Middle Passage from West Africa to the West 
     Indies was dangerous and horrific for enslaved people;
       Whereas the Middle Passage carried mothers, fathers, 
     children, sisters, brothers, aunts, uncles, cousins, and 
     individuals from all walks of life to slavery in the 
     Americas;
       Whereas, although the sexes were separated, men, women, and 
     children were kept naked, packed close together, and the men 
     were chained for long periods;
       Whereas, according to some historians, about 12 percent of 
     those who embarked did not survive the voyage;
       Whereas sharks followed the slave ships to feed on bodies 
     of slaves thrown overboard;
       Whereas enslaved people suffered a variety of miserable and 
     often fatal maladies due to the Atlantic slave trade, and to 
     inhumane living and working conditions;
       Whereas infant and child mortality rates were twice as high 
     among slave children as among Southern White children;
       Whereas enslaved people often worked from before sunup to 
     after sundown, 6 to 7 days a week often without food for long 
     periods of time;
       Whereas enslaved Black families lived with the perpetual 
     possibility of separation caused by the sale of one or more 
     family members;
       Whereas it is estimated that approximately one third of 
     enslaved children in the upper South States of Maryland and 
     Virginia experienced family separation in one of three 
     possible scenarios: sale away from parents, sale with mother 
     away from father, or sale of mother or father away from 
     child;
       Whereas Nat Turner was born into slavery in Southampton 
     County, Virginia, in 1800;
       Whereas Southampton County was home to many plantations, 
     and enslaved people outnumbered free Whites;
       Whereas Turner learned to read and write at a young age, 
     becoming deeply religious;
       Whereas Turner was sold to several different masters over 
     the course of his life, the last time in 1830;
       Whereas Turner preached to his fellow enslaved people, 
     developing a loyal following;
       Whereas Turner began planning a revolt with a few trusted 
     fellow enslaved men from neighboring plantations;
       Whereas Turner's rebellion began in August 1831, quickly 
     growing from a small handful of enslaved individuals to more 
     than 70 enslaved and free Blacks;
       Whereas the rebels went from house to house in Southampton 
     County, freeing enslaved people;
       Whereas the rebels were ultimately defeated by a State 
     militia that had over twice the manpower of the rebels, with 
     three artillery companies reinforcing it;
       Whereas Turner was captured 6 weeks after the rebellion was 
     put down, whereupon he was promptly convicted and sentenced 
     to death;
       Whereas, in retaliation for the uprising, Virginia 
     officially executed 56 Black people, with at least 100 more 
     killed by militias through extrajudicial violence;
       Whereas the rebellion caused widespread panic among 
     slaveholders throughout the South, resulting in widespread 
     violence against enslaved people;
       Whereas, in the wake of the rebellion, the Virginia General 
     Assembly passed legislation making it illegal to teach 
     enslaved or free Blacks to read and write;
       Whereas the Underground Railroad was a network of 
     individuals who helped around 100,000 slaves escape North;
       Whereas the railroad began when a ``conductor'' often 
     posing as a slave would enter a plantation and attempt to 
     guide runaways;
       Whereas escapees would travel 10 to 20 miles each night 
     between safe houses or ``stations'' to avoid detection, 
     waiting in safe houses for the next along the line to be 
     alerted to their presence;
       Whereas individuals running each station, many of whom were 
     White, knew only of local efforts and not the entire 
     operation;
       Whereas Harriet Tubman, born Araminta Ross, lived as an 
     enslaved person through her young life where she endured 
     regular whippings and suffered a traumatic head injury at the 
     hands of an overseer, causing her narcoleptic episodes and 
     migraines throughout her life;
       Whereas Ms. Tubman escaped from slavery along the 
     Underground Railroad, a network of abolitionists who guided 
     escaped slaves to the North traveling primarily at night to 
     avoid bounty hunters;
       Whereas Ms. Tubman returned to the South no less than 13 
     times to free 70 enslaved persons, including much of her 
     family, for which she would be given the name ``Moses'';
       Whereas Ms. Tubman deftly led those she saved North during 
     the fall and winter when their would-be captors stayed inside 
     to avoid the cold;
       Whereas, in Ms. Tubman's own words, ``I never ran my train 
     off the track and I never lost a passenger'';
       Whereas, during the Civil War, Ms. Tubman served as a 
     nurse, scout, and spy in the Union army, becoming the first 
     woman to plan and lead a military operation in the United 
     States, liberating 700 enslaved people in South Carolina;
       Whereas, later in life, Ms. Tubman continued working to 
     improve the lives of oppressed people, raising funds for and 
     building schools as well as a hospital in the name of 
     formerly enslaved people while participating in the women's 
     suffrage movement;
       Whereas John Brown, an abolitionist who ran an important 
     stop on the Underground Railroad, dedicated his life to 
     ending slavery;
       Whereas Brown lead a militia in guerrilla attacks on 
     proslavery towns in Kansas, losing one of his sons in the 
     struggle;
       Whereas Brown, with the help of Harriet Tubman, planned and 
     organized an invasion of the South to free all slaves;
       Whereas Brown began his invasion at Harpers Ferry, West 
     Virginia, but was surrounded and captured by Federal troops 
     led by Robert E. Lee, losing two more sons in the fighting;
       Whereas the 13th Amendment was passed by Congress on 
     January 31, 1865, and ratified on December 6, 1865, and 
     provides that ``Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude, 
     except as a punishment for crime whereof the party shall have 
     been duly convicted, shall exist within the United States, or 
     any place subject to their jurisdiction.'';
       Whereas, beginning in the 20th century, African Americans 
     began to relocate from Southern farms to Southern cities, 
     from the South to the Northeast, Midwest, and West, in a 
     movement known as the ``Great Migration'';
       Whereas the relocation of formerly enslaved individuals and 
     their descendants also included unfavorable and at times 
     unjust interactions with law enforcement that often resulted 
     in imprisonment and convict leasing;
       Whereas convict leasing, also known as slavery by another 
     name, was a system that allowed prisons to lease imprisoned 
     individuals to private entities, often corporations and 
     plantations;
       Whereas the remains of 95 persons, thought to be of African 
     ancestry, who were subjected to the State of Texas' convict 
     leasing system were discovered in 2018 at the construction 
     site of Fort Bend Independent School District's James Reese 
     Career and Technical Center in Sugar Land, Texas;
       Whereas, while slavery was abolished, descendants of the 
     enslaved continue to live with the effects of slavery's 
     progenies: Jim Crow, mass lynching, segregation, police 
     brutality, mass incarceration, and institutionalized racism; 
     and
       Whereas, despite the horrors of slavery and against all 
     odds, enslaved people became thought leaders and 
     revolutionaries and

[[Page H7184]]

     changed the course of American history: Now, therefore, be it
       Resolved,

     SECTION 1. SHORT TITLE.

       This resolution may be cited as the ``Original Slavery 
     Remembrance Day Resolution of 2021''.

     SEC. 2. SLAVERY REMEMBRANCE DAY.

       That the House of Representatives--
       (1) supports the designation of a ``Slavery Remembrance 
     Day'' to serve as a reminder of the evils of slavery;
       (2) condemns slavery and its evil progenies; and
       (3) encourages all to acknowledge the importance of slavery 
     remembrance.

                          ____________________