Minutes 12-07-2020 Virtual Business Meeting

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14 BACKGROUND: The first unfree Africans arrived in the English Colony of Virginia in August 1619. This period marked the beginning in American history where people of African descent were taken forcibly from their homeland, transported to the American colonies, and committed to lifelong slavery. On December 6, we mark the 155th Anniversary of the ratification of the 13t" Amendment to the United States Constitution, which abolished slavery in the United States. After ratification in 1865, the immediate impact of the 13th Amendment was to stop chattel slavery in the southern states and involuntary servitude. Section 2 of the 13th Amendment further authorized Congress to "enforce" the ban on slavery and indentured servitude through "appropriate legislation." In 1883, the Supreme Court interpreted Section 2 as "empower[ing] Congress to do more" than pass direct enforcement legislation. The Supreme Court indicated that Congress should "pass all laws necessary and proper for abolishing all badges and incidents of slavery in the United States." The Civil Rights Cases, 109 U.S. 3, 20 (1883). Congress has used the 13th Amendment to enact civil rights laws that target the badges and incidents of slavery by prohibiting racial discrimination in areas such as contracting, housing, and hate crimes. The Supreme Court in The Civil Rights Cases found that the 13th Amendment promised the freed slaves "universal civil and political freedom." It determined that Congress was to use appropriate legislative concepts to assist freed people in fulfilling the promise of universal civil and political freedom. The pledge provided that freed people 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 however 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 people. 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 Later, the policy was rescinded by Andrew Johnson, and the land returned to former slave owners.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 overtaken quickly by "Redemption" led by While Liners, Red Shirts, and Klansman bent on subjecting freed Black Americans 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, held for debt peonage, convict leasing, and in semi-servitude. The government has enacted laws that have disenfranchised Black citizens politically, socially and 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 in purchasing homes. The FHA underwriters warned realtors that even one or two non-whites in the suburbs could undermine property values. In the 1930s, the federal government institutionalized a national appraisal system that used race as a factor in real property assessments. Between 1934 and 1962, the federal government underwrote $120 billion in new housing loans; less than 2% of those dollars went to non-whites.