•HJ 64 IH 
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’’; 
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; 
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•HJ 64 IH 
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, 
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 convict leasing sys-
tem in the State of Texas were discovered in 2018 at the 
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•HJ 64 IH 
construction site of Fort Bend Independent School Dis-
trict’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 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 Day Resolution’’. 
SEC. 2. SLAVERY REMEMBRANCE DAY. 
That the House of Representatives and the Senate— 
(1) designate a ‘‘Slavery Remembrance Day’’ 
annually to serve as a reminder of the evils of slav-
ery; 
(2) condemn slavery and its evil progenies; 
(3) encourage all to acknowledge the impor-
tance of slavery remembrance; and 
(4) authorize and request the President to issue 
a proclamation calling upon the people of the United 
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States to observe such days with appropriate cere-
monies and activities. 
Æ 
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