By: Shelley McKinley, Ed.D.
August 20th, called Slavery Remembrance Day, is fast approaching and commemorates the day that the first 20 enslaved Africans arrived to American shores on the slave ship called the White Lion at Point Comfort, VA in 1619, near what is today called Norfolk. Unlike Juneteenth which celebrates the liberation of enslaved African American people, August 20th is intended to annually observe African American contributions to America while enslaved. It also memorializes those who did not survive the deadly middle passage, and honors the generations of people of African descent who were born to and died in slavery between 1619 and 1865. “We were brought here to be a permanently, identifiable caste of enslaved people,” clarified Congressman Al Green.
Slavery Remembrance Day, a component of the Conscience Agenda and considered our moral imperative, also observes the victories of an enslaved people in spite of the seemingly invincible challenges. The Conscience Agenda involves five points. “Dr. King reminds us that the time is always right to do what is right. More importantly than the right thing to do, is the righteous thing to do. This is what we must do if we are to be respected in this country because we are disrespected. The conscience is that thing that tells you the rightness or wrongness of something. The moral imperative emanates from the conscience. If there is something you
know is wrong, then you are to correct it,” explained Rep. Al Green.
The first point is to expand Slavery Remembrance Day to prevent the evils of slavery from fading from our collective memory so as to prevent it or its discriminatory practices such as mass lynching, black codes, lawful segregation, and institutional racism from making a comeback. This is extremely important in the current political climate. Slavery Remembrance Day, sponsored by Rep. Al Green and co-sponsored by 77 others, passed in the U.S. House, but not the Senate. However, it was acknowledged by President Biden in an August 2022 press release. Slavery Remembrance Day seeks to recognize slavery as we recognize 9/11, Pearl Harbor, and the Holocaust. “We Black people of African ancestry have to be proud of our ancestors because they were the economic foundational mothers and fathers of the country, and were sacrificed so that America could achieve the greatness that it has,” shared Rep. Al Green. The second point is to award a Congressional Gold Medal to the American Enslaved, as we did for the Confederate soldiers on July 18, 1956, who fought to maintain slavery.
Congress has never awarded a Congressional Gold Medal to the over 10 million enslaved men, women, and children who arduously labored to fuel our nation’s foundational wealth. Awarding of a Congressional Gold Medal is not unprecedented as it has been awarded to Confederate soldiers, the Tuskegee Airmen, the Navajo Code Talkers, and posthumously to the Service members who died in Afghanistan on August 26, 2021. The economic foundational mothers and fathers of the country deserve a Congressional Gold Medal. Rep. Al Green’s third point is to remove the name of Richard Russell from the Russell Senate Office Building in Washington, D.C. The building, referred to as the Old Senate Building prior to 1972, took on the self-proclaimed white supremacist’s name largely due to his longevity of 40 years in the Senate. Richard Russell, however, was an opponent of federal civil rights legislation and co-authored the 1956 Southern Manifesto that criticized the Supreme Court’s landmark Brown vs. Board of Education desegregation case as an abuse of judicial power. Rep. Al Green argues that his name should be removed from the tax-supported building. “It is a place of national shame. I assure you that if this building was named in such a way to offend Anglos, then the name would come down. The name should come down because it offends people of African ancestry.”
The fourth point is to enact a Securities and Exchange Atonement Act, which will investigate the extent of financial companies’ historical connections to slavery and facilitate atonement from those companies, namely insurance companies and banks, who profited directly from slavery. Such an Act would amend the Securities Act of 1934 to require issuers of securities to conduct a racial equity audit every two years regarding civil rights, equity, diversity, and inclusion. The audits will be reported to the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) and publicly. Additionally, the Act would create an Office of Reparations Programs at the Department of Treasury to provide funding for racial equity.
The fifth point is to establish the Department of Reconciliation (DOR) tasked with creating a national, comprehensive strategy to eliminate racism and invidious discrimination. The Department would correct the past, and prevent future transgressions against all minority groups (African American, Asian, Hispanic, Native American, female, LBGTQ) who face unjust discrimination and disadvantage. To ensure the Department will always have funding, Rep. Al Green proposes no less than 10% of the Defense Department’s budget, roughly $84.1billion, to ensure that the work will go uninterrupted. There is pending legislation sponsored by Rep. Al Green to jumpstart the work of the DOR.
