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Whereas the liberation rebellion caused widespread panic 
among slaveholders throughout the South, resulting in 
widespread violence against defenseless enslaved people; 
Whereas, in the wake of the liberation rebellion, the Virginia 
General Assembly passed legislation making it illegal to 
teach enslaved or free Blacks to read and write; 
Whereas the Underground Railroad was a liberation network 
of freedom fighters who helped around 100,000 enslaved 
people escape to freedom in the North; 
Whereas the liberation Underground Railroad began when a 
freedom fighter ‘‘conductor’’ often posing as an enslaved 
person would enter a plantation and attempt to guide 
runaways; 
Whereas liberated escapees would travel 10 to 20 miles each 
night between safe houses or ‘‘stations’’ to avoid detec-
tion, waiting in safe houses for the next freedom fighter 
along the line to be alerted to their presence; 
Whereas freedom fighters supporting escapees at each station 
(many of whom were White), knew only of local efforts 
and not the entire liberation 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 enslaver, which caused 
narcoleptic episodes and migraines throughout her life; 
Whereas freedom fighter/liberator Tubman escaped from slav-
ery along the liberation Underground Railroad, the net-
work of abolitionist freedom fighters who guided the lib-
erated to the North traveling primarily at night to avoid 
bounty hunter enslavers; 
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•HJ 67 IH 
Whereas freedom fighter Tubman returned to the South no 
less than 13 times to liberate 70 enslaved people, includ-
ing much of her family, for which she would be given the 
name ‘‘Moses’’; 
Whereas freedom fighter Tubman deftly led those she liber-
ated North during the fall and winter, when would-be en-
slaver captors would stay inside to avoid the cold; 
Whereas, in freedom fighter Tubman’s own words, ‘‘I never 
ran my train off the track and I never lost a passenger’’; 
Whereas, during the Civil War, freedom fighter Tubman 
served as a nurse, scout, and spy in the Union army, be-
coming the first woman to plan and lead a military oper-
ation in the United States, liberating 700 enslaved people 
in the slave State South Carolina; 
Whereas, later in life, freedom fighter Tubman continued 
working to improve the lives of oppressed people, raising 
funds for and building schools and a hospital in the name 
of formerly enslaved people while participating in the 
women’s suffrage movement; 
Whereas freedom fighter John Brown, a White abolitionist 
who ran an important stop on the liberation Under-
ground Railroad, dedicated his life to ending slavery; 
Whereas freedom fighter John Brown lead a militia in guer-
rilla attacks on proslavery towns in Kansas, losing one of 
his sons in the liberation struggle; 
Whereas Brown, with the help of freedom fighter Harriet 
Tubman, planned and organized a liberation invasion of 
the South to liberate all slaves; 
Whereas Brown began his liberation invasion at Harpers 
Ferry, West Virginia, but was surrounded and captured 
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•HJ 67 IH 
by Federal troops led by enslaver Robert E. Lee, losing 
2 more sons in the fighting; 
Whereas the 13th Amendment to the Constitution was passed 
by Congress on January 31, 1865, and ratified on De-
cember 6, 1865, and provides that ‘‘Neither slavery nor 
involuntary servitude, 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 jurisdiction.’’; 
Whereas, beginning in the 20th century, African Americans 
began to relocate from Southern farms to Southern cities, 
from the South to the Northeast, Midwest, and West, in 
a movement known as the ‘‘Great Migration’’; 
Whereas the relocation of formerly enslaved people and their 
descendants also included unfavorable, and at times un-
just, interactions with law enforcement that often re-
sulted in imprisonment and convict leasing; 
Whereas convict leasing, slavery by another name, was a sys-
tem that allowed prisons to lease imprisoned people to 
private entities, often corporations and plantations; 
Whereas the remains of 95 persons, thought to be of African 
ancestry, who were subjected to the convict leasing sys-
tem in the State of Texas, were discovered in 2018 at the 
construction site of the James Reese Career and Tech-
nical Center of the Fort Bend Independent School Dis-
trict in Sugar Land, Texas; 
Whereas, while slavery was abolished, descendants of the 
enslaved continue to live with the effects of slavery’s 
progenies, including convict leasing, Black codes, Jim 
Crow laws, mass lynching, lawful segregation, police bru-
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•HJ 67 IH 
tality, mass incarceration, and institutionalized invidious 
discrimination (racism); 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 by the Senate and House of Representatives
of the United States of America in Congress assembled, 
SECTION 1. SHORT TITLE. 
This resolution may be cited as the ‘‘Original Slavery 
Remembrance Month Resolution’’. 
SEC. 2. SLAVERY REMEMBRANCE MONTH. 
That the House of Representatives and the Senate— 
(1) supports the annual designation of a ‘‘Slav-
ery Remembrance Month’’ to serve as a reminder of 
the evils of slavery, its continuing effects, and the 
freedom fighters who fought to end this horrific 
crime against humanity; 
(2) condemn slavery and its evil progenies, in-
cluding— 
(A) convict leasing; 
(B) Black codes; 
(C) Jim Crow laws; 
(D) mass lynching; 
(E) lawful segregation; 
(F) police brutality; 
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•HJ 67 IH 
(G) mass incarceration; and 
(H) institutionalized invidious discrimina-
tion; 
(3) encourage all to acknowledge the impor-
tance of slavery remembrance; and 
(4) authorizes and requests the President to 
issue a proclamation calling upon the people of the 
United States to observe such month with appro-
priate ceremonies and activities. 
Æ 
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