Agenda - 12-07-2020; 4-b - Resolution in Support of Reparations for African American Blacks

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 Later the policy was rescinded by Andrew Johnson, and the land returned to former slave owners.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