A Petition to the
United States Congress

For generations, a fundamental truth has been omitted from the official record of this Republic: the institution of American chattel slavery was not merely immoral. It stood in profound tension with the natural law principles and inalienable rights the founding documents proclaimed. The simultaneous codification of race-based, hereditary bondage created a deep contradiction with the constitutional order the Republic claimed to uphold. The Thirteenth Amendment's ratification formally ended the legal institution and confirmed the incompatibility of hereditary chattel slavery with the founding principles this nation declared to the world.

The Thirteenth Amendment did not merely abolish slavery. It empowered Congress under Section 2 to eradicate the badges and incidents of servitude which still plague American Freedmen this day. The wealth gap is the evidence. For over 150 years, that authority has not been fully exercised. The descendants of emancipated persons, American Freedmen, continue to experience documented and compounding economic consequences directly traceable to that history.

According to research by the Institute for Policy Studies, at current trajectories American Freedmen family wealth is projected to reach zero by 2053. The Color of Wealth reports document that the median American Freedmen family holds a fraction of the wealth of white families in every major American city. These are not the wounds of a distant past. They are the living, verifiable consequences of authority left unexercised.

The contradiction at the heart of this matter is not abstract. On March 25, 2026, before the United Nations General Assembly, the United States declared that it "remains steadfast in its opposition to and condemnation of the historic wrongs that resulted from the trans-Atlantic slave trade" and affirmed that it "remains committed to the acknowledgement that these are historical wrongs." The United States has made this acknowledgment to the world. It has never made it in law to the people most directly harmed.

This is not without precedent. The precedent cuts against the government's inaction. In 1988, Congress passed the Civil Liberties Act (Public Law 100-383), codifying in positive federal law a formal apology to Japanese Americans for their wartime internment, establishing a public education fund, and providing $20,000 in restitution to each surviving victim. That acknowledgment was not a resolution. It was not a symbolic gesture. It was law, signed by the President, enforceable, and funded. Congress has demonstrated it knows how to translate moral acknowledgment into legal obligation when it chooses to do so.

By contrast, the only Congressional actions regarding slavery have been non-binding resolutions: H.Res. 194 (2008), in which the House apologized for slavery and Jim Crow, and S.Con.Res. 26 (2009), in which the Senate did the same, with a disclaimer explicitly stating the resolution could not be construed to authorize or support reparations claims. Congress apologized. Then it closed the door. American Freedmen received words. Japanese Americans received law. That disparity is not a historical accident. It is the present policy of the United States government, and it demands correction.

We, the undersigned, therefore call upon the United States Congress to exercise its constitutional authority under Section 2 of the Thirteenth Amendment. We demand the following:

• I That Congress pass a formal acknowledgment resolution declaring that American chattel slavery, a hereditary race-based institution of involuntary servitude, was in fundamental violation of the natural law principles and constitutional order upon which the United States was founded.
• II That Congress commission a comprehensive study of the ongoing economic, civic, and social harms suffered by American Freedmen families as direct badges and incidents of the institution of slavery and its aftermath, including the destruction of Reconstruction-era gains, the terror of Jim Crow, and the structural exclusion from New Deal and post-War wealth-building programs.
• III That Congress establish a Select Committee on American Freedmen Affairs empowered to recommend specific legislative remedies pursuant to its Section 2 enforcement authority under the Thirteenth Amendment, including but not limited to targeted economic development, community reinvestment, and institutional redress.
• IV That Congress formally affirm that the United States government has a constitutional responsibility under Section 2 of the Thirteenth Amendment to address the continuing consequences of slavery and its badges upon American Freedmen and their descendants.

This petition is grounded not in grievance alone, but in law. The Constitution of the United States, the Civil Rights Acts of Reconstruction, and over a century of federal jurisprudence confirm that this obligation exists and has never been discharged. We do not ask for charity. We ask that America honor the authority it claimed when it ratified the Thirteenth Amendment and exercise that authority in full to remedy the continuing consequences of slavery and its badges upon American Freedmen and their descendants.

The time for acknowledgment is now. The constitutional authority exists. The moral imperative is clear. Sign and add your name to history.