Orange County NC Website
2 <br /> badges and incidents of slavery. The 13th Amendment was enacted to free Black people from <br /> slavery and servitude and deputize Congress to fulfill the Amendment's promises. The pledge <br /> given freed slaves was that they would receive the full complement of federal civil rights and <br /> protections to fully enjoy citizenship denied to them at this Country's inception. This promise <br /> was confirmed by the Supreme Court in the Civil Rights Cases in 1883, but yet continues today <br /> to be an unfulfilled promise of the full complement of rights of citizenship. <br /> After the emancipation of slaves, governments were more concerned with providing <br /> compensation to former slave owners for losing their "human property" rather than ensuring the <br /> rights of freed slaves. In 1865, General Sherman's Field Order No. 15 divided abandoned and <br /> confiscated plantations in South Carolina and low country South Carolina into 40 acres lots. The <br /> newly freed slaves were given a lot along with a mule. Later the policy was rescinded by <br /> Andrew Johnson, and the land returned to former slave owners. Southern Reconstruction was <br /> quickly overtaken by "Redemption" led by While Liners, Red Shirts, and Klansman bent on <br /> subjecting freed blacks to racial terror, including lynching, to keep them in their place. Federal <br /> Union troops withdrew from the South in 1877, leaving the black citizens to fend for themselves <br /> as they had to navigate racial terrorism and governmental laws that allowed them to be <br /> segregated, disenfranchised, and held for debt peonage, convict leasing, and in semi-servitude. <br /> We see the vestiges of racial terror as the world watched George Floyd die with a knew on his <br /> neck. <br /> The government has enacted laws that have disenfranchised Black citizens not only politically <br /> and socially but also economically. Roosevelt's omnibus programs, passed under the Social <br /> Security Act of 1935, was drafted in race-neutral ways that disenfranchised a majority of Black <br /> citizens. Congress enacted the Social Security legislation, leaving out farmworkers and <br /> domestics; nationally, 65% of black people were disenfranchised, and 70-80% of those Blacks <br /> people lived in the South.' The Federal Housing Administration ("FHA") was created in 1930 to <br /> assist average Americans purchasing homes. The FHA underwriters warned realtors that even <br /> one or two non-white in the suburbs could undermine the property values. In the 1930s, the <br /> federal government then institutionalized a nationalized appraisal system that used race as a <br /> factor in real property assessments. Between 1934 and 1962, the federal government <br /> underwrote 120 billion dollars in new housing loans; less than 2% of those dollars went to non- <br /> whites. <br /> Consequently, many Blacks veterans returning from the wars couldn't benefit from the GI Bills <br /> VA loans. Redlining, blockbusting, restrictive covenants, predatory contract sales practices all <br /> served to deprive blacks of building economic wealth and kept neighborhoods racially <br /> segregated. Today, the average net worth of white families and black families continues to be <br /> disproportionate. <br /> Staff is requesting a Resolution in support of Reparation for African American/Black People as a <br /> way forward to address and redress the promise that should have been made to the unfreed <br /> slaves by the Constitution of the United States "that all men are created equal." Staff is further <br /> requesting the Board to support the Resolution because reparation fulfills the promise made in <br /> 1865 by the 13t" Amendment for the government to use its authority to remove all badges and <br /> incidents of slavery so that black people can enjoy the full complements of rights of citizenship. <br /> ' Coates,Te-Nehisi,"The Case for Reparations,"June 2014,https://www.theatlantic.com/ma,gazine/archive/2014/06/the-case- <br /> for-reparations/361631/? clg id=CiwKCAiA-_L9BRBQEiwA- <br /> bm5fvBR9e6G�zHXvtQg8eNRYAdZwOYgd3clySpS6SbN6EsxlgdhsCyyYYhoCzwgQAvD_BwE,accessed November 25, <br /> 2020. <br />