•HRES 517 IH 
Whereas the Middle Passage carried mothers, fathers, chil-
dren, sisters, brothers, aunts, uncles, cousins, and indi-
viduals 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 pos-
sibility 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 fa-
ther away from child; 
Whereas Nat Turner was born into slavery in Southampton 
County, Virginia, in 1800; 
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•HRES 517 IH 
Whereas Southampton County was home to many planta-
tions, 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, devel-
oping 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 South-
ampton County, freeing enslaved people; 
Whereas the rebels were ultimately defeated by a State mili-
tia 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 sen-
tenced to death; 
Whereas, in retaliation for the uprising, Virginia officially ex-
ecuted 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 wide-
spread 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; 
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•HRES 517 IH 
Whereas the Underground Railroad was a network of individ-
uals 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 be-
tween safe houses or ‘‘stations’’ to avoid detection, wait-
ing in safe houses for the next along the line to be alert-
ed 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 en-
dured regular whippings and suffered a traumatic head 
injury at the hands of an overseer, causing her narco-
leptic episodes and migraines throughout her life; 
Whereas Ms. Tubman escaped from slavery along the Under-
ground 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 dur-
ing 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’’; 
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•HRES 517 IH 
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 im-
prove the lives of oppressed people, raising funds for and 
building schools as well as a hospital in the name of for-
merly 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 ser-
vitude, 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 jurisdic-
tion.’’; 
Whereas, beginning in the 20th century, African Americans 
began to relocate from Southern farms to Southern cities, 
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•HRES 517 IH 
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 re-
sulted in imprisonment and convict leasing; 
Whereas convict leasing, also known as slavery by another 
name, was a system that allowed prisons to lease impris-
oned 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’ con-
vict leasing system were discovered in 2018 at the con-
struction 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 rac-
ism; and 
Whereas, despite the horrors of slavery and against all odds, 
enslaved people became thought leaders and revolution-
aries and 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’’. 
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•HRES 517 IH 
SEC. 2. SLAVERY REMEMBRANCE DAY. 
That the House of Representatives— 
(1) supports the designation of a ‘‘Slavery Re-
membrance 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 impor-
tance of slavery remembrance. 
Æ 
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