Sanford Bishop: “I thank the gentleman from North Carolina (Mr. Butterfield) for allowing me to share in this commemoration. I rise to…”

“I thank the gentleman from North Carolina (Mr. Butterfield) for allowing me to share in this commemoration. I rise to commemorate the 155th anniversary of the ratification of the Thirteenth Amendment to the Constitution. 155 years ago, slavery was abolished in the United States after Georgia's State legislature ratified the Thirteenth Amendment, pushing it over the three-fourths requirement. This was a monumental step for civil rights in America, the first of three constitutional amendments during the Reconstruction period that sought equality for the former slaves and their descendants, Black Americans. Unfortunately, we know that these amendments did not achieve equality, and in fact outraged many of the former slaveholders. Slavery was the backbone of the southern economy and way of life. Systems like that do not disappear overnight. After slavery was abolished, sharecropping came in its place; in theory, free and fair, but in practice, anything but. The Ku Klux Klan was organized by former Confederate officers to violently keep Black people in their places. The exception written into the Thirteenth Amendment that allowed involuntary servitude as a punishment upon conviction of a crime gave rise to what was known as the chain gang: free prison labor, which still exists in many places today.…”