Bill Text: GA HR295 | 2009-2010 | Regular Session | Introduced

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Bill Title: Acknowledge Georgia's role in slavery; urge reconciliation

Spectrum: Partisan Bill (Democrat 6-0)

Status: (Introduced - Dead) 2009-02-18 - House Second Readers [HR295 Detail]

Download: Georgia-2009-HR295-Introduced.html

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09 LC 38 0821

House Resolution 295

By: Representatives Williams of the 165th, Brooks of the 63rd, Heard of the 114th, Murphy of the 120th, Collins of the 95th, and others

A RESOLUTION

Acknowledging Georgia's role in slavery and urging reconciliation; and for other purposes.

WHEREAS, Georgia is preparing for the sesquicentennial of the Civil War and will be a centerpiece for related tourism and historians; and

WHEREAS, James Edward Oglethorpe, Georgia's founding father, established Georgia as a slave-free colony in 1733; and

WHEREAS, Georgia was the only one of Britain's American colonies to attempt to prohibit slavery as a matter of public policy; and

WHEREAS, the colony's Trustees, bowing to pressure from pro-slavery interests, convinced England's House of Commons to repeal the prohibition against slavery in Georgia as of January 1, 1751. South Carolina planters and their slaves flooded into Georgia and soon dominated the colony's government; and

WHEREAS, between 1750 and 1775, Georgia's enslaved population grew in size from less than 500 to approximately 18,000 people. Beginning in the mid-1760's, Georgia began to import slaves directly from Africa; and

WHEREAS, in 1776, our nation's Declaration of Independence proclaimed that "all Men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness"; and

WHEREAS, Georgia and the other American colonies ignored the standards of liberty and equality and, during the era of the American Revolution, African slaves soon constituted nearly half of Georgia's colonial population. Georgia delegates to the Continental Congress forced Thomas Jefferson to tone down his critique of slavery in his initial draft of the Declaration of Independence in 1776. Likewise, at the Constitutional Convention in Philadelphia in 1787, Georgia delegates joined with South Carolina's to insert clauses protecting slavery into the new federal charter; and

WHEREAS, during the course of the infamous Atlantic slave trade, millions of Africans became involuntary immigrants to the New World and slavery in the United States resembled no other form of involuntary servitude in that Africans were captured and sold at auction as chattel; and

WHEREAS, Africans were brutalized, humiliated, dehumanized, and stripped of their names and heritage, and families were torn apart and sold separately; and

WHEREAS, slavery was sanctioned and perpetuated by the laws of the United States of America and the State of Georgia and ranks as one of the most horrendous violations of our nation's and state's founding ideals; and

WHEREAS, the slave population of Georgia increased dramatically during the early decades of the nineteenth century. In 1790, just before the explosion in cotton production, some 29,264 slaves resided in this state. By 1800, the slave population in Georgia had more than doubled to 59,699. By 1810, the number of slaves had grown to 105,218; and

WHEREAS, when Congress banned the African slave trade in 1808, Georgia's slave population did not decline. Instead, the number of slaves imported from the Chesapeake's stagnant plantation economy as well as the number of children born to Georgia slave mothers continued to outpace the number of slaves who died or were transported from Georgia. In 1820, the slave population stood at 149,656; in 1840 the slave population had increased to 280,944; and in 1860, on the eve of the Civil War, some 462,198 slaves constituted 44 percent of the state's total population. By the end of the antebellum era Georgia had more slaves and slaveholders than any state in the Lower South and was second only to Virginia in the South as a whole; and

WHEREAS, in January, 1830, the State of Georgia authorized the purchase of slaves for the purpose of building and maintaining roads, and by October of that year, the state had purchased 207 slaves for $50,000.00. In January of 1834, this state empowered Thomas King of McIntosh County to take over all of these slaves and use or sell them as he saw fit. They were sold at auction the following month; and

WHEREAS, even while slavery was playing a dominant economic and political role in Georgia, most white Georgians did not own slaves. In 1860, less than one-third of Georgia's adult white male population of 132,317 were slaveholders; and

WHEREAS, propping up the institution of slavery was a judicial system that denied African Americans the legal rights enjoyed by white Americans. Since the colonial era, children born of slave mothers were deemed chattel slaves, doomed to "follow the condition of the mother" irrespective of the father's status. Georgia law supported slavery by restricting the right of slaveholders to free individual slaves. Slaves were taxed as property by the state. Other statutes made the circulation of abolitionist material a capital offense and outlawed slave literacy and unsupervised assembly. Although the law technically prohibited whites from abusing or killing slaves, it was extremely rare for whites to be prosecuted and convicted for these crimes. The legal prohibition against slave testimony about whites denied slaves the ability to provide evidence of their victimization; and

WHEREAS, in spite of his promise that he would not interfere with slavery where it existed, Lincoln ended slavery with the Emancipation Proclamation in 1862; and

WHEREAS, even after the abolition of slavery by the 13th Amendment to the U. S. Constitution on December 18, 1865, there followed a systematic discrimination toward Americans of African descent that was rooted in racial bias and racial misunderstanding; and

WHEREAS, African Americans experienced varying degrees of political, social, and economic discrimination for almost 100 years until the passage of the 1964 Civil Rights Act and the 1965 Voting Rights Act led by heroes such as Georgia's Reverend Martin Luther King, Jr., until all laws were rewritten to assure that every American is treated equally under the law; and

WHEREAS, in 2005, the Georgia General Assembly finally removed the last vestiges of the Jim Crow laws that remained on the law books.

NOW, THEREFORE, BE IT RESOLVED BY THE HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES that this body acknowledges that sanctioning and promoting the institution of slavery by the State of Georgia was wrong and that, as a result, denial of liberty and other grave injustices were inflicted on fellow human beings under the auspices of state law.

BE IT FURTHER RESOLVED that the House of Representatives expresses its profound regret for Georgia's role in the enslavement of Africans.

BE IT FURTHER RESOLVED that the members of this body hereby support the fair and accurate education of Georgia citizens about the inhumanity of slavery in order to foster a respect for the fundamental dignity of human life and the God given rights of all people as called for in the Declaration of Independence.

BE IT FURTHER RESOLVED that slavery and the triumph against it, as well as efforts to end lingering inequality and discrimination, are to be embraced and celebrated as the State of Georgia marks the historic sesquicentennial anniversary of the Civil War; that official promotions and educational material should include Georgia's role in slavery; and that, by doing so, we will recognize that an accurate and unbiased understanding of our common history will make possible a deep and lasting reconciliation of all Georgians.

BE IT FURTHER RESOLVED that the Clerk of the House of Representatives is authorized and directed to transmit appropriate copies of this resolution to the Governor, the Georgia Department of Economic Development, the Georgia Department of Natural Resources, the Chancellor of the Board of Regents, and the State School Superintendent.