June 19 Congressional Hearing Held on ReparationsJune 19, 1865 is celebrated across the United States as the day on which all the people still enslaved when the Civil War ended gained freedom. The system of slavery was such that while hundreds of thousands of enslaved people rebelled against enslavement and fought in the civil war to end the system, many remained enslaved even after the end of the civil war. On June 19, 154 years ago, Union soldiers arrived in Galveston, Texas to inform all the people still enslaved that the slave system had been defeated. Since then it is considered emancipation day by many African Americans. People of all nationalities join in celebrating this day, also known as Juneteenth.
Congressional hearings have not been held since 2007. This is despite Representative John Conyers of Michigan, the longtime sponsor of House Resolution 40, who first proposed the measure calling for a study of reparations in 1989, reintroducing the bill every session until his resignation in 2017. Texas Representative Sheila Jackson Lee, the resolution's new sponsor, introduced it earlier this year and pushed for the hearing. This is in part because various African American organizations have been fighting on the issue, including holding town hall meetings. As well, in 2016 the UN called on the U.S. to pay reparations for slavery. Its report brought out that "compensation is necessary to combat the disadvantages caused by 245 years of legally allowing the sale of people based on the colour of their skin." It warned that the U.S. has not confronted its legacy of "racial terrorism." The report also specified that reparations can come in a variety of ways, including educational opportunities, psychological rehabilitation, debt cancellation and formal apologies. The issue of reparations has become part of the 2020 presidential race, as several of the more than 20 Democratic presidential primary candidates signaled their support for compensating the descendants of slaves, though not in the traditional sense of direct payments to African Americans. Most have remained vague on the issue, as has long been the case with elected officials. It remains to be seen if any of the presidential candidates or Congressional members will actually provide concrete proposals for reparations. This has not been the case up until now, even though African American organizations active on this issue have presented comprehensive demands for reparations. For Your Information
Juneteenth is the oldest known celebration commemorating the ending of slavery in the United States. On June 19, 1864, Union soldiers led by Major General Gordon Granger landed at Galveston, Texas with news that the civil war had ended and that the enslaved people were now free. General Granger read to the people of Texas, General Order Number 3 which begins: "The people of Texas are informed that in accordance with a Proclamation from the Executive of the United States, all slaves are free. This involves an absolute equality of rights and rights of property between former masters and slaves, and the connection heretofore existing between them becomes that between employer and free laborer." This was two-and-a-half years after President Lincoln's Emancipation Proclamation -- which had become official January 1, 1863. The Emancipation Proclamation had little impact on Texans in part due to the minimal number of Union troops to enforce the new Executive Order. However, with the surrender of General Lee in April 1865, and the arrival of General Granger's regiment on June 19 that year, the forces were finally strong enough to influence and overcome the resistance. Later attempts to explain this two-and-a-half year delay in the delivery of this important news have yielded several versions that have been handed down through the years. Often told is the story of a messenger who was murdered on his way to Texas with the news of freedom. Another is that the news was deliberately withheld by the enslavers to maintain the labour force on the plantations. And still another is that federal troops actually waited for the slave owners to reap the benefits of one last cotton harvest before going to Texas to enforce the Emancipation Proclamation. Certainly, for some, President Lincoln's authority over the rebellious states was in question. Whatever the reasons, conditions in Texas remained status quo well beyond what was statutory. (Voice of Revolution)
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This year on Juneteenth, the House
Judiciary
Subcommittee on
the Constitution, Civil Rights and Civil Liberties held a hearing
with the stated purpose "to examine, through open and
constructive discourse, the legacy of the Trans-Atlantic Slave
Trade, its continuing impact on the community and the path to
restorative justice."