On the recordSeptember 9, 2019
I thank my colleague, Congresswoman Barbara Lee for anchoring this Special Order recognizing the 400th anniversary of the first slave arriving in America. Four hundred years ago the first slave arrived in America, ships set sail from the west coast of Africa and in the process, began one of mankind's most inhumane practices: human bondage and slavery. For two centuries, human beings--full of hopes and fears, dreams and concerns, ambition and anguish--were transported onto ships like chattel, and the lives of many forever changed. The reverberations from this horrific series of acts--a transatlantic slave trade that touched the shores of a colony that came to be known as America, and later a democratic republic known as the United States of America--are unknown and worthy of exploration. Approximately 4,000,000 Africans and their descendants were enslaved in the United States and colonies that became the United States from 1619 to 1865. The institution of slavery was constitutionally and statutorily sanctioned by the Government of the United States from 1789 through 1865. American Slavery is our country's original sin and its existence at the birth of our nation is a permanent scar on our country's founding documents, and on the venerated authors of those documents, and it is a legacy that continued well into the last century.…
