Recognizing 155th Anniversary of 13th Amendment

Floor Speech

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Mr. BISHOP of Georgia. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman from North Carolina (Mr. Butterfield) for allowing me to share in this commemoration.

I rise to commemorate the 155th anniversary of the ratification of the Thirteenth Amendment to the Constitution.

155 years ago, slavery was abolished in the United States after Georgia's State legislature ratified the Thirteenth Amendment, pushing it over the three-fourths requirement. This was a monumental step for civil rights in America, the first of three constitutional amendments during the Reconstruction period that sought equality for the former slaves and their descendants, Black Americans.

Unfortunately, we know that these amendments did not achieve equality, and in fact outraged many of the former slaveholders.

Slavery was the backbone of the southern economy and way of life. Systems like that do not disappear overnight.

After slavery was abolished, sharecropping came in its place; in theory, free and fair, but in practice, anything but.

The Ku Klux Klan was organized by former Confederate officers to violently keep Black people in their places.

The exception written into the Thirteenth Amendment that allowed involuntary servitude as a punishment upon conviction of a crime gave rise to what was known as the chain gang: free prison labor, which still exists in many places today.

Although the Thirteenth Amendment passed, southern legislatures enacted Black Codes and Jim Crow laws, legislation that technically abided by the Thirteenth, Fourteenth, and Fifteenth Amendments, but still allowed discrimination against Black Americans, maintaining white supremacy and still giving White Americans preferential treatment.

This persisted up through the second half of the 20th century and persisted until the blood, sweat, and tears of the civil rights movement in the 1950s and 1960s. John Lewis, Jim Clyburn, Bennie Thompson, Hosea Williams, Joe Lowery, Medgar Evers put their lives on the line to stand up for the humanity of Black Americans.

We often hear that slavery has been over for a long time, 155 years. It may be long for an individual, but not for a nation. But we should make clear and make no mistake about it that the legacy of slavery still haunts America and it still handicaps our ability to realize the noble principles that this country stands for, that all men are created equal and endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable rights, life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness, keeping in mind that we have made a lot of progress, but we are not where we need to go. There is still much work to do.

Mr. Speaker, I challenge my colleagues in this body to keep in mind and ask themselves a question: What are we doing today to make America a more perfect union for the next 155 years?

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