By Lawrence Hamm\People’s Organization For Progress
Photos: People’s Organization For Progress\YouTube Screenshots\Wikimedia Commons
Today, on the Juneteenth holiday to celebrate the emancipation of enslaved Black people in the United States, the People’s Organization For Progress (POP) called for the passage of Reparations legislation at the state and federal levels.
“On this day more than any other we demand that African Americans receive Reparations for the centuries of enslavement of our ancestors in the United States,” Lawrence Hamm, Chairman, People’s Organization For Progress stated.
“We must receive repair and restitution for the stolen labor of our ancestors which produced the wealth that built this country and made it the richest in the world,” Hamm said.
“In this regard we call for passage in the New Jersey Legislature and in the U.S. Congress Reparations legislation that has been stalled in those bodies for years,” he said.
“We call upon the state legislature to pass and Governor Murphy to sign into law A602/S3164, the Reparations task force bill,” Hamm said.
“And we call on Congress to pass HR 40 and S40 which would establish a federal reparations commission. We ask the entire congressional delegation from New Jersey to become co-sponsors of these bills,” Hamm said.
The task force and the commission called for by both bills establish bodies that would study the impact of slavery and make recommendations to the legislature and Congress respectively on how reparations would be made to the descendants of the enslaved.
“If the legislature and Congress fail to establish the task force at the state level and commission at the national level then we call upon both the governor and the president to establish them by executive order,” Hamm said.
The demand for Reparations for African Americans is being raised by organizations, elected officials and activists all around the country.
Hamm said a Reparations resolution was passed at the Martin Luther King People’s Convention for Justice and Resistance that was held April 26th in Newark, NJ. The convention was endorsed by 287 organizations.
“We also demand Reparations for the suffering we endured as a result of the racist oppression and exploitation that grew out of slavery and continued in its aftermath,” Hamm said.
“This includes the racial terror and lynching of the post Reconstruction era, the unjust system of peonage called sharecropping, the convict lease labor system, and the century of legalized apartheid known as Jim Crow segregation,” Hamm stated.
“And we want Reparations for the racist violence, institutionalized racism, segregation, discrimination, inequality, mass incarceration, repression and gerrymandering that continues to this day which also have their roots in the enslavement of Black people,” he said.
“POP urges the New Jersey Legislature to follow the example of the New York, California and other states which have passed Reparations bills and established state commissions,” he said.
“Juneteenth and Reparations were born at the same time, out of the same struggle, and for the same cause. If you talk about one then you must talk about the other. In fact, Juneteenth should become synonymous with Reparations,” he said.
The Juneteenth celebration commemorates the arrival of 10,000 Union troops in Galveston, Texas at the end of the Civil War who ordered the emancipation of Black people enslaved there.
The Union troops arrived on June 19, 1865. The annual celebrations of this event in Texas spread throughout the southwest and eventually the nation. It became a federally recognized holiday several years ago.
On January 16, 1865, Union General William Tecumseh Sherman issued Special Field Order No. 15 which ordered the redistribution of 400,000 acres of land confiscated from southern slave masters to newly freed Black families in forty acre plots.
This action was followed by the introduction of a bill in Congress, HR 29 by Thaddeus Stevens which proposed that each freedman or his widow would receive forty acres of land in the former Confederate States.
The proposal was never realized. After Lincoln was assassinated Andrew Johnson, a southern sympathizer, became president and by executive order returned all confiscated lands.
“The emancipation of Black people and an attempt at reparations both occurred at the end of the end of the Civil War. Emancipation becomes the law of the land with the passage of the 13th Amendment in December of 1865,”he said.
“This was bolstered by the passage of the 14th and 15th amendments in subsequent years. Chattel slavery was abolished but the struggle for Reparations continues,” he said.
For more information contact People’s Organization For Progress (973)801-0001.
