U.S. marks the 150th anniversary of the Thirteenth Amendment
14th December 2015 · 0 Comments
The nation last week marked the 150th anniversary of the 13th Amendment with ceremonies commemorating the watershed moment in U.S. history and reflection on what needs to be done to eradicate the remaining vestigees of slavery in the 21st century.
Here in New Orleans and across the U.S., there were much-needed discussions about the meaning of the 13th Amendment for Blacks as they continue to strive to achieve equal protection under the law in 2015.
“On December 6, 1865, a coalition comprising three- quarters of our Nation’s States ratified the 13th Amendment to our Constitution, abolishing slavery in the United States and affirming the truth that no union founded on the principles of liberty and equality could survive half-slave and half-free,” President Barack Obama said in a Proclamation issued on Dec. 4. “Bringing to a close one of the most painful chapters in our country’s history, the Amendment ushered in a new birth of freedom.
“Today, we celebrate it for the protections it restored and the lives it liberated, and in honor of the millions of slaves who endured brutal violence and daily indignities, we rededicate ourselves to the proposition manifested in its ratification,” Obama continued.
“This Amendment to the Constitution came not only at the culmination of years of Civil War, but also as a result of courageous individuals advocating and agitating for an America in which slavery was no longer an institution of society. President Lincoln gave his last full measure of devotion to the cause he would not live to see codified. He knew the basic rights he sought for slaves could only be secured by a whole and unified Government, and he pursued reconciliation while remaining fierce in his conviction. Volunteers along the Underground Railroad aided slaves seeking freedom, providing safety and comfort in the midst of deep anguish. And soldiers who fought, sometimes against their own sisters and brothers, did so for both the preservation of our Union and liberty itself. The 13th Amendment was the product of generations of men and women who, through centuries of bloodshed and systemic oppression, stayed true to their belief in what America could be and kept marching toward justice.
“The courage to change that sustained the abolitionist movement carried forth in a long line of heroes who followed -individuals who loved our country profoundly and answered the patriotic call to push it to expand the boundaries of freedom. From ordinary women stepping into an extraordinary role, bravely fighting for their right to participate in our democracy, to a coalition of conscience that marched on our Nation’s Capital and protested for equality, the last century and a half has been defined by those who stood resolute in keeping lit the flame that burned in the hearts of all those determined to secure what they knew to be their God-given rights.”
Ratified eight months after the end of the Civil War, the 13th Amendment declared that “Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude” shall exist in the United States.
It gave Congress the power to enforce this article by legislation. The amendment had been preceded by a federal restriction on the importation of enslaved Africans in 1808, by the Emancipation Proclamation of 1863, and by legislative bans against slavery in many of the states prior to 1865, but the 13th Amendment was the first unconditional constitutional action to terminate the institution of slavery and the first of the amendments to protect the equal status of African Americans (others are the 14th, 15th, and 24th amendments), according to the website African American Ancestry.
There were 3.9 million slaves in the United States in 1860.
The state of Louisiana ratified the amendment on February 17, 1865.
But while the 13th Amendment did away with the institution of U.S. slavery in the traditional sense, some say it also laid the foundation for slavery-like conditions found today in the nation’s penal institutions today.
“This country was built on the backs of slaves and to end that horrific experience was to be celebrated,” Pat Bryant, who serves as Co-Moderator of Justice & Beyond along with the Rev. Dwight Webster of New Orleans, told The Louisiana Weekly Thursday. “However, there was an exception in the 13th Amendment and that exception was ‘except for serious crimes.’
“We have 150 years of experience where Black men particularly have been without due process made criminals and still we fill the jails, especially in the South,” Bryant continued. “But it’s happening around the country. Black men and Black women, people of color, are being made new slaves.”
In New Orleans, 80 percent of the prisoners in Orleans Parish Prison are Black males. New Orleans has been called the epicenter of Louisiana, which has been dubbed the “prison capital” of the world.
In recent years, a number of groups have called for a repeal of the 13th Amendment.
While Pat Bryant said he doesn’t support efforts to repeal the 13th Amendment, he did say that he supports “deleting the exception” that turns people of color and the poor into modern-day slaves in U.S. penal institutions.
“As a Black man, I see no reason to celebrate an act that continued the enslavement of a people beyond the boundaries of a Civil War that … legally gave whites the ability for continued subjugation of a complete race of people,” W.C. Johnson, a member of Community United for Change and co-host of the local cable-access show “OurStory,” told The Louisiana Weekly Friday. “It is obvious from the language that the 13th Amendment was a compromise between the North and the South to keep a certain level of slavery alive and well…
“President Obama should have called for the repeal of the 13th Amendment to force America to come to grips with the reality of what harm the 13th Amendment has done to the descendants of the enslaved Africans,” Johnson added. “Black folks are entitled to have their cause petitioned to the body of lawmakers. Of course, I do not foresee this becoming a concern for America. If America was as concerned as America tries to make people believe it is, America would stop the senseless killing of Black people by police overnight.”
“Despite the 13th Amendment, today we still face vestiges of enslavement of African Americans,” Mitch Crusto, the Henry F. Bonura Jr. Distinguished Professor of Law at Loyola University of New Orleans and author of a new book titled Involuntary Heroes: Hurricane Katrina’s Impact on Civil Liberties, told The Louisiana Weekly Friday. “One example is the socioeconomic inequalities resulting from continuing racism and another is our prison system.
“The 13th Amendment makes an expressed exception for criminal activity — that’s a curious exception. I’m not quite certain why that exception was made other than the reality that if you were deemed a criminal it would effectively enslave you.”
“Incarceration certainly continues to enslave people physically so they are limited in their movement,” Crusto said when asked if there was a correlation between the 13th Amendment’s exception allowing slavery in penal institutions and mass incarceration today. “And it does provide enslavers — the people who run private prisons — significant economic benefit, which the slavery system did as well.
“So there’s still parallelisms between historical, 19th-century slavery and 21st-century enslavement but it’s not as significant a number of people impacted as the enslavement of a whole race of people.”
The Louisiana Weekly asked if slavery was allowed to evolve rather than be abolished or eliminated altogether.
“Absolutely, because slavery did not end with the 13th Amendment,” Crusto said. “In the early 20th century we still had similar forms of enslavement — a lot of people just really weren’t given the same freedoms.
“To some extent we have relinquished those types of sharecropping arrangements for some African Americans and then sometimes replaced them with Mexican Americans and other marginalized people.
“We have not replaced them completely,” Crusto added. “There are still a lot of Black people in similar situations. We have kind of swapped people out.”
“The good news is that in America people are no longer the legal property of others — except the state,” Crusto told The Louisiana Weekly. “People are no longer the property of individuals, although they continue to be in some instances property of the state. That’s pretty significant.”
That’s the good news. Crusto said there are still some glaring injustices that need to be addressed.
In his book, Involuntary Heroes, Crusto devoted a chapter to the Crescent City Connection incident during which law enforcement officers prevented New Orleans residents from crossing over to the West Bank in the wake of Hurricane Katrina.
“The federal court has found that you do not have a right to travel within your own state,” he said. “That’s been upheld by the U.S. Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals. “That’s a vestige of slavery, in my opinion. The fact that you don’t have an essential and fundamental right of freedom of movement… We really have not eradicated all aspects of enslavement within the law when you don’t have a fundamental right to travel, freedom of movement.”
The Associated Press reported that at a Capitol Hill ceremony on Wednesday commemorating the 150th anniversary of the 13th Amendment, lawmakers talked about the historical legacy and meaning of the watershed moment in U.S. history. House and Senate leaders read historical accounts of what happened in Congress and in the states leading up to ratification.
“When we read those 43 short and simple words, we should remember these men and what they did,” House Speaker Paul Ryan, R-Wis., said of the amendment. “We should realize those words, like their acts, were gallant, noble and profound.”
Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., said “Every day we must work together to raise our nation from the depths of its darkest chapters to higher expressions of our values.”
“One hundred and fifty years after the 13th Amendment’s ratification, the United States endures, and though the scourge of slavery is a stain on our history, we remain a people not trapped by the mistakes of our past, but one that can look at our imperfections with humility and decide it is within our power to remake our Nation to more closely align with our highest ideals. On this historic occasion, let us pay tribute to those who suffered for too long and to those who risked everything to make this country better. With unyielding determination to stand on their shoulders and reach for an even freer and more equal tomorrow, we can honor them with he recognition and respect worthy of their extraordinary contributions to our country,” said Obama.
This article originally published in the December 14, 2015 print edition of The Louisiana Weekly newspaper.
