Lawmakers mark Juneteenth by reviving ‘abolition amendment’
As the nation this week made Juneteenth a federal holiday, honoring the end of the enslavement of Black people, lawmakers are reviving calls to end a loophole in the Constitution that allowed another form of slavery — forced labor for those convicted of some crimes — to thrive.
Oregon Sen. Jeff Merkley and Georgia Rep. Nikema Williams reintroduced legislation Thursday to revise the 13th Amendment, which bans enslavement or involuntary servitude except as a form of criminal punishment. That exception, which has been recognized since 1865, has led to the common practice of forced prison labor. Social justice advocates say it created generations of Black families touched by mass incarceration and poverty and that the ramifications are still being felt today. Juneteenth seemed like the appropriate time to address this “huge piece of systemic racism in the middle of our Constitution,” Merkley told The Associated Press.
“At the moment that we are celebrating, if you will, the 13 th Amendment and the end of slavery and its eventual announcement ... we should at the same time recognize that the 13th Amendment was flawed,” Merkley said. “It enabled states to arrest people for any reason, convict them and put them back into slavery.”
The amendment’s loophole for criminal punishment encouraged former Confederate states, after the Civil War, to devise ways to maintain the dynamics of slavery. They used restrictive measures known as the “black codes,” laws targeting Black people for benign interactions from talking too loudly to not yielding on the sidewalk. Those targeted would end up in custody for these minor actions, and would effectively be enslaved again.
The so-called “abolition amendment” was introduced as a joint resolution in December. Mostly supported by Democrats in both the House and Senate, it failed to gain traction before the session’s end. The hope this time around, Merkley said, is to ignite a national movement.
The issue is important to Williams, a Black woman who grew up in the South. She hopes this legislation won’t be viewed through the prism of money and what the loss of prison labor would mean. Instead, she says, the history of the prison system and its relationship to people of color must be viewed in a “people-centered way.”
“Our people have already been in chains and enslaved because of money,” Williams said. “We have to make sure that we are truly moving forward and not using money as a crutch of why we’re continuing to perpetuate sins of our nation’s founding and our nation’s history.”
One group that has long been part of the movement is Worth Rises, a criminal justice advocacy group helping with the legislation’s rollout. The amendment’s clause has significant repercussions today, says Bianca Tylek, Worth Rises’ executive director. Incarcerated workers make at most pennies on the dollar for their contributions, she says, and they lack recourse if they get hurt working or have to work when sick.
“We’re talking about people who can be beaten for not working. People can be denied calls and visits, contact with their family,” Tylek said. “People can be put into solitary confinement. People can take hits on their longterm record.”