Slavery Remembrance Day

Floor Speech

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Mr. GREEN of Texas. Mr. Speaker, the British statesman, Sir Winston Churchill, is credited with having stated that those who fail to learn from history are doomed to repeat it. This is the reason why, in part, I will be introducing legislation for a slavery remembrance day. Currently, no such day exists in the United States.

National days of remembrance provide an effective means to honor those impacted by horrific events. They prevent the tragedy from fading from our memories by educating the generations to come, and they highlight the modern-day implications of such events.

My resolution would provide a day for slavery remembrance, and the language of the resolution would commemorate the lives of all enslaved people, while condemning the act and the perpetration as well as perpetuation of slavery in the United States of America and across the world.

The resolution would discuss the Middle Passage, the Underground Railroad, and the lives of Nat Turner, Harriet Tubman, and John Brown. It would also make the 18 persons who were elected to Congress from the Reconstruction era as honorary cosponsors of the resolution in a posthumous way.

I am proud to do this, and I ask that all Members please consider becoming original cosponsors of the resolution.

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