SAN FRANCISCO — San Francisco supervisors have backed the idea of paying reparations to Black people, but whether members will agree to lump-sum payments of $5 million to every eligible person or to any of the more than 100 other recommendations made by an advisory committee won’t be known until later this year.
The idea of Black reparations is not new, but the federal government’s promise of granting 40 acres and a mule to newly freed slaves was never realized. It wasn’t until George Floyd, a Black man, was killed in police custody in 2020 that reparations movements began spreading in earnest across the country.
The state of California and the cities of Boston and San Francisco are among jurisdictions trying to atone not just for chattel slavery, but for decades of racist policies and laws that systemically denied Black Americans access to property, education and the ability to build generational wealth.
WHAT IS THE ARGUMENT FOR REPARATIONS IN SAN FRANCISCO?
Black migration to San Francisco soared in the 1940s because of shipyard work, but racially restrictive covenants and redlining limited where people could live. When Black residents were able to build a thriving neighborhood in the Fillmore, government redevelopment plans in the 1960s forced out residents, stripped them of their property and decimated Black-owned businesses, advocates say.
Today, less than 6% of Black residents in San Francisco are Black yet they make up nearly 40% of the city’s homeless population.
Supporters include the San Francisco NAACP, although it said the board should reject the $5 million payments and focus instead on reparations through education, jobs, housing, health care and a cultural center for Black people in San Francisco. The president of the San Francisco branch is the Rev. Amos C. Brown, who sits on both the statewide and San Francisco reparations panels.
WHAT IS THE ARGUMENT AGAINST REPARATIONS?
Critics say California and San Francisco never endorsed chattel slavery, and there is no one alive today who owned slaves or was enslaved. It is not fair for municipal taxpayers, some of whom are immigrants, to shoulder the cost of structural racism and discriminatory government policies, critics say.
An estimate from Stanford University’s Hoover Institution, which leans conservative, has said it would cost each non-Black family in San Francisco at least $600,000 in taxes to pay for the costliest of the recommendations: The $5 million per-person payout, guaranteed income of at least $97,000 a year for 250 years, personal debt elimination and converting public housing into condos to sell for $1.
A 2022 Pew Research Center survey found 68% of U.S. respondents opposed reparations compared with 30% in favor. Nearly 80% of Black people surveyed supported reparations. More than 90% of Republicans or those leaning Republican opposed reparations while Democrats and those leaning Democratic were divided.
HOW WILL SAN FRANCISCO PAY FOR THIS?
It’s not clear. The advisory committee that made the recommendations says it is not its job to figure out how to finance San Francisco’s atonement and repair.
That would be up to local politicians, two of whom expressed interest Tuesday in taking the issue to voters. San Francisco Supervisor Matt Dorsey said he would back a ballot measure to enshrine reparations in the San Francisco charter as part of the budget. Shamann Walton, the supervisor leading the charge on reparations, supports that idea.
WHAT ARE SOME OF THE OTHER REPARATIONS RECOMMENDATIONS?
Recommendations in education include establishing an Afrocentric K-12 school in San Francisco; hiring and retaining Black teachers; mandating a core Black history and culture curriculum; and offering cash to at-risk students for hitting educational benchmarks.
Recommendations in health include free mental health, prenatal care and rehab treatment for impoverished Black San Franciscans, victims of violent crimes and formerly incarcerated people.
The advisory committee also recommends prioritizing Black San Franciscans for job opportunities and training, as well as finding ways to incubate Black businesses.
WHAT HAPPENS NEXT?
There is no deadline for supervisors to agree on a path forward. The board next plans to discuss reparations proposals in September, after the San Francisco African American Reparations Advisory Committee issues a final report in June.
WHAT ABOUT REPARATIONS FROM THE STATE?
In 2020, California became the first state to form a reparations task force. But nearly two years into its work, it still has yet to make key decisions on who would be eligible for payment and how much. The task force has a July 1 deadline to submit a final report of its reparations recommendations, which would then be drafted into legislation for lawmakers to consider.
The task force has spent multiple meetings discussing time frames and payment calculations for five harms experienced by Black people, including government taking of property, housing discrimination and homelessness and mass incarceration. The task force is also debating state residency requirements.
Previously, the state committee voted to limit financial reparations to people descended from enslaved or freed Black people in the U.S. as of the 19th century.
Two weeks after a boat packed with migrants sank off the coast of southern Italy, there is still no peace for the living or the dead, and the missing – mostly children – continue to wash up on the beaches.
The latest – a girl aged five or six – was discovered on Saturday morning, bringing the toll from when the ill-fated boat broke apart on the rocks on February 26 off the village of Cutro to 74. Nearly half were minors.
The local coroner’s office provided names for many of the dead including Torpekai Amarkhel, a 42-year-old female journalist from Afghanistan, who was killed along with her husband and two of their three children.
Her other child, a seven-year-old daughter, is among the approximately 30 people still missing, presumed dead, from the tragedy.
Amarkhel had fled Afghanistan with her family following the clampdown on women, her sister Mida, who had emigrated to Rotterdam, told Unama News radio, a United Nations project Amarkhel was involved in.
Shahida Raza, who played football and hockey for Pakistan’s national team, was also among the dead. A friend said she was traveling in the hope of securing a better future for her disabled son.
Initially, those found were given alphanumeric code numbers, rather than names. When first responders found the corpse of 28-year-old Abiden Jafari from Afghanistan, they identified her only as KR16D45 – KR for the nearby city of Crotone, 16 because she was the 16th victim found, D for donna or woman, and 45, her estimated age.
But after taking her to the morgue, they discovered she was a women’s rights activist who had been threatened by the Taliban, likely causing her to risk her life at sea.
The body of a six-year-old boy, first identified as KR70M6, was named by his uncle as Hakef Taimoori.
The uncle had a family photo showing the young boy wearing the same shoes as he had on when he washed up on the beach. His parents and two-year-old brother also died in the disaster. A third brother remains among the missing.
The dead have also been caught in a struggle between the Italian state and family members.
The Interior Ministry ordered that all bodies be transferred from Calabria where the caskets have been on display in an auditorium, to the Islamic cemetery of Bologna for burial, in keeping with Italy’s protocol for irregular migrants who die attempting to enter Italy.
Family members who either survived the wreck or came from other parts of Europe to claim their loved ones’ remains protested with makeshift signs and a sit-in in front of the auditorium on Wednesday.
After a tense negotiation, the Prefecture of Crotone confirmed to CNN that 25 families, mostly Afghan and Syrian, agreed to have their loved ones buried in Bologna,.
All those who have not been identified will also be buried in Bologna along with the remains of a Turkish national who has been identified as one of the human traffickers.
The fate of the rest remains a point of negotiation, but the mayor of Crotone Vincenzo Voce said the Italian state would pay for any repatriations either to countries of origin or to be buried with family members in other parts of Italy.
The Italian Interior Ministry told CNN it could not comment on what would happen to the victims’ remains, but confirmed that past protocol is not to pay for repatriating anyone who died attempting to enter Italy as an irregular migrant but to make the country of origin pay costs. In the last decade, no repatriations have taken place, the ministry said.
Of the 82 survivors, three Turkish citizens and one Pakistan citizen have been arrested for human trafficking, and eight people are still hospitalized.
Most of the survivors were moved this week to a Crotone hotel after human rights advocates led by Italian leftist politician Franco Mari protested the conditions in which they were being kept, which included one shared bathroom for men and another for women near sleeping quarters that included only benches and mattresses on the floor to sleep.
Mari, who visited the reception center, tweeted that none of the survivors had sheets, towels or pillows. Twelve others were moved to a reception center for unaccompanied minors.
Against the backdrop of the saga about what to do with both the survivors and the victims, there is a growing firestorm about the rescue itself.
A surveillance plane for European border control Frontex had identified the ill-fated vessel the day before it sank and had alerted the Italian Coast Guard.
The Coast Guard said in a statement that the vessel was not identified as a migrant boat, and that, at any rate, it did not seem in distress.
Heat sensing surveillance images released by the Coast Guard show that only one person was visible on board the ship when they flew over it.
Survivors recounted to media and human rights groups that they were locked in the hull of the ship and allowed to come up for air at intervals during the four-day journey from Turkey.
The Crotone public prosecutor’s office confirmed to CNN that it had opened a criminal investigation into the circumstances of the failed rescue after more than 40 human rights associations and NGOs signed a petition to demand all records be made public to determine if anyone failed to provide assistance to the boat in accordance with maritime law.
On Thursday, the Council of Ministers led by Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni met on the disaster in Cutro and said they would focus on targeting trafficking rings and increasing jail time for human traffickers to 30 years.
Many of the government cars were pummeled with stuffed animals by protesters in Cutro who held signs that said “not in my name” to protest against blocking migrants and refugees from entering Europe through Italy.
The ministers also discussed “speeding up the mechanism for applying for asylum” rather than increasing the quota, which stands at accepting 82,700 migrants who qualify for asylum in 2023. So far this year, more than 17,600 people have reached Italy by sea.
In 2022, 105,131 people entered the country by sea. The process to apply for asylum often takes between three and five years, depending on the country of origin. People who are not from asylum-producing countries, but are economic migrants, are repatriated back to their countries of origin.
Italian President Sergio Mattarella said the Afghanistan citizens who survived would be prioritized for asylum. It is yet unclear if those who do not qualify will be repatriated to their countries of origin.
Meloni’s right-leaning government has vowed to clamp down on human traffickers and NGO rescue vessels. But the boats keep coming – hundreds of migrants were rescued this weekend – and signs are that they arriving earlier than ever. This tragedy is unlikely to be the last.
A monument honoring famed abolitionist Harriet Tubman was unveiled in Newark, New Jersey, this week, replacing a statue of Christopher Columbus removed in 2020 amid social injustice protests, officials said.
The 25-foot-tall monument, titled “Shadow of a Face,” was revealed Thursday at the heart of the city’s recently renamed Harriet Tubman Square, Newark Mayor Ras J. Baraka announced in a statement.
“In a time when so many cities are choosing to topple statutes that limit the scope of their people’s story, we have chosen to erect a monument that spurs us into our future story of exemplary strength and solidity,” Baraka said.
“We have created a focal point in the heart of our city that expresses our participation in an ongoing living history of a people who have grappled through many conflicts to steadily lead our nation in its progress toward racial equality.”
Tubman was born into slavery in Maryland and eventually escaped to Pennsylvania. From 1850 to 1860, she made more than a dozen trips to Maryland to help enslaved people reach freedom through the Underground Railroad, a secret network of routes and safe houses, according to the US National Parks Service.
The name of Tubman’s monument was inspired by the 1962 poem “Runagate Runagate” by Robert Hayden, which references the abolitionist. The monument was selected in June 2021 following a national open call and multiphase selection process, Baraka said.
Monument designer and architect Nina Cooke John said she wanted to incorporate the Newark community into the monument.
“One way I wanted to bring about their connection is really to meet the community with the prompt, ‘What is your story of liberation? What is your story – big or small – of really overcoming multiple obstacles that we all have to overcome,’ ” Cooke John said in an interview published by the Harriet Tubman Monument Project.
Michele Jones Gavin, Tubman’s three-times great-grand niece, said the monument will commemorate the activist’s heroism and inspire future generations to take action in the face of injustice.
“Let’s forever remember Harriet Tubman, for her compassion, courage, bravery, service to others, her patriotism, and her commitment to faith, family, fortitude, and freedom,” Gavin said.
The Columbus statue Tubman’s memorial replaces was removed amid a nationwide racial reckoning following the murder of George Floyd in May 2020 at the hands of Minneapolis police.
The movement spurred the removal or renaming of dozens of monuments, including those of Confederate leaders and other controversial figures in US history.
Columbus has long been a contentious figure for his treatment of the Indigenous communities he encountered and for his role in the violent colonization at their expense.
The monument includes two sections: a portrait wall and a mosaic of tiles, all contained within a circular learning wall inscribed with stories of Tubman’s life and Newark’s history of Black liberation, the mayor’s statement said.
The portrait wall features a larger-than-life depiction of Tubman while the mosaic features stories from Newark residents.
“Not only are their stories physically a part of the monument, but they can also come to the monument and feel that ownership because they were really a part of creating it,” Cooke John said in her interview with the Harriet Tubman Monument Project.
“Seeing their stories being a part of other stories of people from Newark in this mosaic that’s on the wall and is attached to the backside of the wall that has Harriet Tubman’s face, the central figure which grounds us in the larger-than-life story of Harriet Tubman.”
Residents also recorded some of their personal stories for the monument’s audio experience, according to the mayor’s statement. The audio experience includes the story of Tubman’s life, narrated by entertainer Queen Latifah. Audio clips will also be included in school curricula, in collaboration with the Newark Museum of Art.
To complement the monument, galleries at the Newark Museum of Art will incorporate stories related to slavery and the slave trade, Silvia Filippini-Fantoni, deputy director for learning and engagement at the Newark Museum of Art, said in a video interview published by the Harriet Tubman Monument Project.
Harriet Tubman Square is near the intersection of Washington and Broad streets in downtown Newark’s arts district.
The monument is close to the Newark Museum of Art at 49 Washington Street. Click here for public transportation options to the area.
A new monument honoring Harriet Tubman was unveiled in Newark, New Jersey, on Thursday. The monument, called “Shadow of a Face,” also includes an audio installation covering Tubman’s life narrated by singer and actor Queen Latifah, who was born in Newark. Elaine Quijano has more.
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Nevada voters will decide whether to get rid of slavery and involuntary servitude as a form of criminal punishment from the state constitution on the 2024 ballot, part of a push among some states to remove outdated, century-old language that has stayed on the books.
The Nevada Senate unanimously passed the joint resolution on Thursday after the assembly took similar steps last week. The proposed amendment first passed the Nevada Legislature in 2021, though ballot measures must survive two consecutive sessions before going to a vote of the people.
“I don’t know that we have fully accepted this very painful past,” said Democratic Sen. Pat Spearman of North Las Vegas, who co-sponsored the resolution. “And what you don’t face, you can’t fix.”
Slavery and involuntary servitude are prohibited in the Nevada constitution “otherwise than in the punishment for crimes, whereof the party shall have been duly convicted.” The 13th Amendment of the U.S. Constitution has nearly identical language, prompting recent attempts by Democrats in Congress to scrub that language federally.
About a dozen states are pushing this year to get rid of slavery or involuntary servitude exceptions in their constitutions, according to the Abolish Slavery National Network. Some advocates said this has major legal implications today, particularly in litigation related to prison labor pay and conditions.
That language in more than a dozen state constitutions is one of the lasting legacies of chattel slavery in the U.S., and the loophole gave way to other racist measures post-Civil War. This included “black codes” laws passed in the decade after the Civil War, which targeted Black people for benign interactions such as talking too loudly or not yielding on the sidewalk. Those targeted would end up in custody for these minor actions and often be forced into low-paying or unpaid work.
Also, in some southern states, convict leasing was essentially a new form of slavery that started during the Reconstruction Era and went on for decades. States and companies made money from arresting mostly Black men and then leasing them to private railways, mines and plantations.
Colorado became the first state in recent years to revise its constitution in 2018 to ban slavery and involuntary servitude, followed by Utah and Nebraska in 2020.
Last fall, voters approved measures that scrubbed the language in Alabama, Oregon, Tennessee and Vermont.
California lawmakers are also considering putting the measure on the 2024 ballot. Last week, more than 40 supporters of the measure gathered in Sacramento, where lawmakers and formerly incarcerated people talked about the impacts of forced labor in prisons.
It’s not uncommon for prisoners in California, Nevada and other states to be paid around $1 an hour to fight fires, clean prison cells, make license plates or do yard work at cemeteries.
The ACLU of Nevada is considering litigation related to the pay and working conditions of incarcerated women at prison firefighting camps — and the measure could protect people from “harmful, deadly conditions without being forced to labor for our sake,” said Lilith Baran, the group’s policy manager.
“This is not just a feel-good bill,” Baran said in an interview last week after a hearing for the resolution. “This has actual, real implications on people’s lives.”
Democrats in Congress have not yet passed federal legislation changing the 13th Amendment of the U.S. Constitution. If the latest attempt wins approval in Congress, the constitutional amendment must be ratified by three-fourths of U.S. states.
Moments before Thursday’s vote, Democratic Sen. Dallas Harris, of Las Vegas, another co-sponsor, took note of the federal language and ongoing attempts to rectify it.
“While we can remove this from our state constitution, it still remains in our federal constitution and I urge my colleagues in the federal government to make similar steps today.”
She continued: “In the immortal words of Melissa Jefferson, better known as Lizzo, ‘It’s about damn time.’”
Shamima Begum, who left the United Kingdom to join ISIS at the age of 15, has lost her appeal against the decision to revoke her British citizenship.
Judge Robert Jay gave the decision on Wednesday following a five-day hearing in November, during which her lawyers argued the UK Home Office had a duty to investigate whether she was a victim of trafficking before removing her citizenship.
The ruling does not determine if Begum can return to Britain, but whether the removal of her citizenship was lawful.
Begum, now 23 and living in a camp in northern Syria, flew to the country in 2015 with two school friends to join the ISIS terror group. In February 2019, she re-emerged and made international headlines as an “ISIS bride” after pleading with the UK government to be allowed to return to her home country for the birth of her son.
Family of ISIS victim says YouTube algorithm is liable. What will the Supreme Court say?
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Then-Home Secretary Sajid Javid removed her British citizenship on February 19, 2019, and Begum’s newborn son died in a Syrian refugee camp the following month. She told UK media she had two other children prior to that baby, who also died in Syria during infancy.
Begum’s lawyers criticized Wednesday’s ruling as a “lost opportunity to put into reverse a profound mistake and a continuing injustice.”
“The outcome is that there is now no protection for a British child trafficked out of the UK if the home secretary invokes national security,” Gareth Pierce and Daniel Furner, of Birnberg Pierce Solicitors, said in a statement seen by UK news agency PA Media.
“Begum remains in unlawful, arbitrary and indefinite detention without trial in a Syrian camp. Every possible avenue to challenge this decision will be urgently pursued,” it continued.
Rights group Amnesty International described the ruling as a “very disappointing decision.”
“The power to banish a citizen like this simply shouldn’t exist in the modern world, not least when we’re talking about a person who was seriously exploited as a child,” Steve Valdez-Symonds, the group’s UK refugee and migrant rights director, said in a statement.
“Along with thousands of others, including large numbers of women and children, this young British woman is now trapped in a dangerous refugee camp in a war-torn country and left largely at the mercy of gangs and armed groups.”
“The home secretary shouldn’t be in the business of exiling British citizens by stripping them of their citizenship,” Valdez-Symonds said.
Javid, the home secretary who removed Begum’s British citizenship, welcomed Wednesday’s ruling, tweeted that it “upheld my decision to remove an individual’s citizenship on national security grounds.”
“This is a complex case but home secretaries should have the power to prevent anyone entering our country who is assessed to pose a threat to it.” Javid added.
Begum has made several public appeals as she fought against the government’s decision, most recently appearing in BBC documentary The Shamima Begum Story and a 10-part BBC podcast series.
In the podcast series she insisted that she is “not a bad person.” While accepting that the British public viewed her as a “danger” and a “risk,” Begum blamed this on her media portrayal.
She challenged the UK government’s decision to revoke her citizenship but, in June 2019, the government refused her application to be allowed to enter the country to pursue her appeal.
In 2020, the UK Court of Appeal ruled Begum should be granted leave to enter the country because otherwise, it would not be “a fair and effective hearing.”
The following year, the Supreme Court reversed that decision, arguing that the Court of Appeal made four errors when it ruled that Begum should be allowed to return to the UK to carry out her appeal.
Shamima Begum loses legal bid to return home to appeal citizenship revocation (February 2021)
Begum was 15 when she flew out of Gatwick Airport with two classmates and traveled to Syria.
The teenagers, all from the Bethnal Green Academy in east London, were to join another classmate who had made the same journey months earlier.
While in Syria, Begum married an ISIS fighter and spent several years living in Raqqa. Begum then reappeared in al-Hawl, a Syrian refugee camp of 39,000 people, in 2019.
With ISIS fall, Europe faces returnees dilemma (February 2019)
Speaking from the camp before giving birth, Begum told UK newspaper The Times that she wanted to come home to have her child. She said she had already had two other children who died in infancy from malnutrition and illness.
She gave birth to her son, Jarrah, in al-Hawl in February of that year. The baby’s health quickly deteriorated, and he passed away after being transferred from the camp to the main hospital in al-Hasakah City.
In response to that news, a British government spokesperson told CNN at the time that “the death of any child is tragic and deeply distressing for the family.”
But the spokesperson added the UK Foreign Office “has consistently advised against travel to Syria” since 2011.
China’s navy has significant advantages over its US rival, including a bigger fleet and greater shipbuilding capacity, as Beijing seeks to project its power across the oceans, the head of the United States Navy said Tuesday.
Speaking at the National Press Club in Washington, DC, US Navy Secretary Carlos Del Toro said China “consistently attempts to violate the maritime sovereignty and economic well-being of other nations including our allies in the South China Sea and elsewhere.”
“They got a larger fleet now so they’re deploying that fleet globally,” he said, adding that Washington must upgrade the US fleet in response.
“We do need a larger Navy, we do need more ships in the future, more modern ships in the future, in particular that can meet that threat,” he said.
Satellite images of mockup US Navy ships in China spark concern (November 2021)
China’s People’s Liberation Army Navy could be fielding up to 400 ships in the coming years, the Navy secretary said – up from about 340 now.
Meanwhile, the US fleet sits at under 300 ships.
According to the US Navy’s Navigation Plan 2022 released last summer, the Pentagon’s goal is to have 350 manned ships by 2045 – still well short of the projection for China’s fleet.
Before that target is met, however, the US fleet is expected to shrink as older vessels are retired, according to a November report from the US Congressional Budget Office.
Del Toro said Tuesday that US naval shipyards can’t match the output of Chinese ones. As with fleet size, it’s about numbers.
“They have 13 shipyards, in some cases their shipyard has more capacity – one shipyard has more capacity than all of our shipyards combined. That presents a real threat,” he claimed.
Del Toro did not give a breakdown of those shipyards, but Chinese and Western reports say China has six major and two smaller shipyards building naval vessels.
In the US, seven shipyards produce large and deep draft ships for the US Navy and Coast Guard, according to an October report from Brent Sadler at the Center for National Defense.
But no matter the number of shipyards, they need workers, and Del Toro says China has a numerical advantage there, largely because it is free of the restrictions, regulations and economic pressures that affect labor in the US.
Analysts warn of intensifying arms race across Asia (November, 2021)
One big US problem is finding skilled labor, he said.
“[W]hen you have unemployment at less than 4%, it makes it a real challenge whether you’re trying to find workers for a restaurant or you’re trying to find workers for a shipyard,” the Navy leader said.
He also said China can do things the US can’t.
“They’re a communist country, they don’t have rules by which they abide by,” he said.
“They use slave labor in building their ships, right – that’s not the way we should do business ever, but that’s what we’re up against so it does present a significant advantage,” he claimed.
CNN has reached out to China’s Foreign Ministry for reaction to Del Toro’s allegations.
Del Toro did not supply specifics to support the slave labor allegation, and analysts expressed doubt that Beijing would resort to such a tactic.
“China has a very large pool of available manpower and it wouldn’t really make sense to use slave labor in a high-tech sector vital to their national security,” said Blake Herzinger, a nonresident fellow and Indo-Pacific defense policy expert at the American Enterprise Institute.
Herzinger said comments like that from the Navy chief are indicative of a pattern where US attention is put in the wrong place – to the detriment of US abilities.
“This seems unfortunately common, that Navy leadership throws stones at real or imagined faults in Chinese shipbuilding rather than reckoning with US failures over two decades to conceptualize, design and build ships for its own navy,” Herzinger said.
Here’s why the US doesn’t want its F-35 wreckage to fall into China’s hands
According to a US Congressional Research Service report from November, the US Navy has taken steps to address the gap with China, including assigning more of its fleet to the Pacific and using newer and more capable ships in Pacific roles.
And Del Toro said Tuesday that the US retains one big advantage over China – “our people.”
“In many ways our shipbuilders are better shipbuilders, that’s why we have a more modern, more capable, more lethal Navy than they do,” he said.
US military personnel are better on their feet, too, Del Toro contended.
“They script their people to fight, we actually train our people to think,” he said.
“There’s a fundamental difference in how we train our Marines and our sailors and our soldiers and our airmen and our Space Force in this country that gives us an inherent advantage over anything the Chinese can put up.”
This could be the next battlefield in modern warfare
A defense attorney who represented the former girlfriend of Rep. Matt Gaetz says that prosecutors made the right decision not to charge the Florida Republican after a yearslong federal sex trafficking investigation.
Attorney Tim Jansen told CNN on Saturday that Justice Department prosecutors were aggressive with his client. She was initially approached as a possible target in the sex-trafficking investigation but eventually agreed to cooperate and testified before an Orlando grand jury hearing evidence in the case last year.
The ex-girlfriend, whom CNN has not named, is not the underage woman at the center of the sex-trafficking investigation.
Jansen, who said the DOJ thoroughly pursued leads against Gaetz, disputed the notion that the congressman was cleared because he was in a powerful position, arguing that the evidence against Gaetz simply wasn’t credible and couldn’t hold up in court.
“They turned over every stone. And I think they ultimately made a decision that they didn’t have evidence to prove a crime,” Jansen said. “And I know critics think that the congressman somehow bought it off or somehow used his power, but I found (federal prosecutor) Todd (Gee) very responsible. He was very organized. He had evidence that he believed that he was following, and they made a determination that they weren’t going to charge.”
CNN has reached out to the Justice Department for comment.
CNN first reported this week that the Justice Department had informed lawyers for Gaetz and several witnesses that it would not prosecute the GOP lawmaker.
Last fall, investigators working on the case recommended not bringing charges amid concerns that the central witnesses in the case would not be perceived as credible, including Joel Greenberg, a former Seminole County, Florida, tax collector who pleaded guilty to six federal crimes, including sex trafficking, and agreed to cooperate with the government.
The DOJ’s formal decision not to charge Gaetz, who has been serving in Congress since 2017, marks the end of a long-running investigation into allegations that the congressman violated federal law by transporting underage girls across state lines for sex.
Gaetz has repeatedly denied any wrongdoing.
Jansen told CNN that his client was initially threatened with prosecution by federal investigators as part of the investigation. Her phone was seized, and she was told she could be a target in the investigation. She ultimately became a witness, Jansen said.
But Jansen said the problems with Greenberg’s credibility and the inconsistencies in the testimony of the women ultimately prompted Gee, a deputy chief of the Justice Department’s public integrity section, not to charge Gaetz.
“In order to prosecute a case, you have to have credible evidence, either tangible witnesses, and in this case, there was no credible evidence of any wrongdoing,” Jansen said. “Joel Greenberg was somebody who (you) couldn’t put on the witness stand, as a prosecutor. I believe these women; none of them believed they were victims of any crime.”
Producer’s note: As a 60 Minutes producer, sometimes you read about a story that you just have to pursue. That was the case for me when I read Joe Heim’s story in the Washington Post about the Miller family in southern Virginia, and their purchase of the home they came to know was called Sharswood. I would like to encourage 60 Minutes viewers to read Joe Heim’s article from earlier this year.
-60 Minutes Producer Shari Finkelstein
Just off the side of the road sat a grand white house called Sharswood, silently holding secrets from the past, waiting for a new owner to uncover them. Sounds like the opening line of a southern gothic novel, but as we first reported in May of last year, this story is about a real family. A real house. This country’s history. And a man who found himself at the center of far more than he had bargained for.
The man is Fred Miller, a 57-year-old Air Force veteran who was looking to buy property in his Virginia hometown for his large extended family’s frequent get-togethers. He had never heard the name Sharswood, and yet this old house would lead him on a journey of discovery, with surprises and revelations that seem both impossible and inevitable all at once.
These are the gentle hills of Pittsylvania County, Virginia — quiet, rural farm country near the North Carolina border that once produced more tobacco than any county in the state.
Fred Miller: Hey, we’re gonna gather up in this room here mainly..
Fred Miller grew up here in a close family that likes getting together regularly for birthdays, fish fry’s, and as his cousin Adam Miller told us, just about anything.
Adam Miller: We play games, and we do, like, (LAUGH) a lotta food competitions.
Lesley Stahl: I hear the food is mainly cake.
Adam Miller: Yeah. (LAUGHTER) Too many cakes–
Fred Miller: Too many cakes.
Fred Miller
Fred’s cousin, Tonya Miller Pope, and his sister, Debra Coles, told us it’s a big family. Fred’s mother, Betty, and his aunt, Brenda, were two of 11.
Lesley Stahl: How many cousins?
Brenda: Oh my God– (OVERTALK)
Karen Dixon-Rexroth: Hundreds
Fred Miller: It’s hundreds–
Brenda: At least 100.
Lesley Stahl: So no wonder Fred needed to find–
Fred Miller: — a huge place.
Brenda: Exactly.
Fred lives in California, where he works as a civil engineer for the Air Force, but he visits the family in Virginia often.
Fred Miller: One day, out of the blue, my sister called me and told me about a big house up the road for sale.
Lesley Stahl: This sister right here?
Fred Miller: Yeah.
Karen Dixon-Rexroth: Yeah.
Karen Dixon-Rexroth, Fred’s baby sister, had spotted it.
Karen Dixon-Rexroth: Me and my mom was ridin’ past the house and I saw the for sale sign. I said, “Oh, my goodness. We have to get this house.” I call Fred. “Fred, this house is for sale.” He’s like, “What house?” I said, “You know the house. The– the scary house,” I call it. (LAUGH)
The house Fred Miller bought
The “scary house” was less than a mile up the road from their mom’s. They’d passed it every day as kids on their way to school.
Lesley Stahl: What did you know about Sharswood?
Betty Dixon: Absolutely nothin’–
Tonya Miller Pope: –nothing.
Debra Coles: Nothing.
Brenda: No.
Adam Miller: Just knew it was– saw the house–
Tonya Miller Pope: A big house.
Karen Dixon-Rexroth: He was debating, “Should we put in a bid for it?” I said, “Yes. Absolutely. Let’s do it.”
Lesley Stahl: Did she twist your arm?
Fred Miller: It took all the twisting she could do. ‘Cause I– I d– I didn’t want to buy it–
But thinking his bid would be rejected anyway, he made an offer of just above the $220,000 asking price.
Lesley Stahl: Why did you think they weren’t going to accept the offer?
Fred Miller: Well, I mean, I’m– initially, me, I thought that because I was Black that they would never– surely, they would never sell this house to someone that’s Black. So for us to be able to own this thing, I thought it would never happen. Yeah. In a million years.
Lesley Stahl: So guess what happened? A million years.
So in May of 2020, Fred Miller purchased the fully-furnished house plus 10 and a half acres of land from a family called the Thompsons, who had owned it since 1917.
Fred Miller: The first time I drove up to the place– all I could do is stop by the edge of the road there and just look up in– in amazement. Like, wow, this is– this is mine. [SMILE]
Karen Dixon-Rexroth: This is an original room from the 1800’s.
Karen says she got obsessed with the house, spending nights and weekends online researching its secrets.
Karen Dixon-Rexroth: Hiding spot they say was from the Civil War, so they would hide the valuables–
Lesley Stahl: Secret hideaway.
Karen Dixon-Rexroth: Yeah, a secret hiding spot.
The Miller family
She discovered the house had been built around 1850, in the gothic revival style, by a well-known New York architect. And she learned and told her family that its name had been Sharswood.
Fred Miller: Every day she was calling me with new information. I’m like, “My goodness, okay, relax.” (LAUGHTER)
Lesley Stahl: Are you exaggerating? Every day?
Fred Miller: No, I’m not exaggerating at all. (LAUGHTER)
But then Karen turned up something that stunned her, in the 1800s, Sharswood had been the seat of a major, 1,300 acre plantation. One of the larger ones in the county.
Lesley Stahl: What did you think of you owning a plantation?
Fred Miller: I was a little bit– a little shocked by that, I would say. Because I just wanted somewhere to have family gatherings.
Tonya Miller Pope: When I found out that it was a plantation, and then I’m like, okay, Fred just bought a plantation–
Tonya Miller Pope: I was like, we own– We own a plantation–
Karen Dixon-Rexroth: Yeah, what we gonna do up here?
Tonya Miller Pope: It was just– a feeling (LAUGH) of just– power. It was just a powerful feeling.
Karen Dixon-Rexroth: It is.
Powerful, but of course, plantation implies slavery, and before the Civil War, Pittsylvania County held more than 14,000 enslaved people. The state of Virginia just under 500,000.
Fred Miller and Karen Dixon-Rexroth
Dexter Miller: I said, “Do you realize what this is?” They didn’t have a clue.
Dexter Miller, one of Fred and Karen’s many second cousins, knew something about Sharswood because years ago, he’d been coworkers with Bill Thompson, whose family then owned it. Bill joined us for a conversation on what used to be his childhood porch.
Lesley Stahl: You grew up in this house.
Bill Thompson: I did. This was my home.
He inherited much of the farmland and still lives up the road. His sister inherited the house and sold it to Fred.
Lesley Stahl: You know, when Fred was buying the house, he did not think that the house would be sold to a Black person.
Bill Thompson: Why would you think that, Fred?
Fred Miller: Well, because, you know, it’s– m– I mean, we’re in rural Virginia. Right?
Bill Thompson: Well, this is true. (ALL LAUGH)
Bill Thompson, Dexter Miller and Fred Miller
For years, Dexter and another second cousin, Sonya Womack-Miranda, had been trying to piece together the Miller family’s origins — a notoriously difficult task for African-Americans because records are hard to come by, especially before 1865.
Sonya Womack-Miranda: It really was a hobby.
Dexter Miller: It was addictive. It was addictive, it really was.
Lesley Stahl: You were like private eyes.
Sonya Womack-Miranda: Yeah.
Dexter Miller: Yes.
They had been able to trace the whole Miller clan back to one woman.
Sonya Womack-Miranda: It’s Dexter’s great-grandmother; it’s my great-great-grandmother, Sarah.
Lesley Stahl: Sarah Miller?
Dexter Miller: Uh-huh.
Sonya Womack-Miranda: Yes.
Sonya Womack-Miranda
They had found a picture of Sarah Miller.
And they’d gotten hold of her death certificate, which showed that she’d been born in Pittsylvania County in 1868, just three years after the end of the Civil War.
And they found an even better resource. One of their oldest living relatives, a beloved former school teacher named Marian Keyes. Ms. Keyes, as everyone here calls her, recently turned 90.
Lesley Stahl: Sarah Miller is the matriarch of the family.
Marian Keyes: Yes, she– yes, she was.
Lesley Stahl: Did you know her?
Marian Keyes: Yes, I did.
Lesley Stahl: Well, tell us about her.
Marian Keyes: She would always be out there with a broom in her hand, and she would be waiting for us.
Marian Keyes remembers her great-grandmother, Sarah, as a force to be reckoned with.
Marian Keyes: What she wanted you to know, you were going to know it.
Lesley Stahl: Was she persnickety, as they say–
Marian Keyes: Yes, yes, yes–
Lesley Stahl: –was she difficult? Stern?
Marian Keyes: Very. Very. She didn’t– she didn’t play. She didn’t play. But we loved her.
But that’s where Ms. Keyes’ knowledge of Miller family history ended. She didn’t know anything about the generations before emancipation.
Lesley Stahl: When you were growing up, what did you learn or hear from your parents about slavery?
Marian Keyes: Nothing.
Lesley Stahl: Nothing?
Marian Keyes: Nothing. They did not talk about it. I don’t know whether they were afraid, whether it was too miserable or painful, or they wanted to forget it, I don’t know. But they did not talk to us about it at all. And we didn’t ask them questions about it.
Lesley Stahl: Why not?
Marian Keyes: We were afraid to. (LAUGH)
Marian Keyes
We heard that again and again from members of the Miller family.
Dexter Miller: Slavery wasn’t mentioned at all.
Lesley Stahl: Was there almost a code? We don’t talk about slavery so nobody did?
Dexter Miller: It was something– that every Black person knew you didn’t talk about. Your parents was to tell you not to discuss grown people business. That’s what they’ll tell you.
Fred Miller: The first time slavery was discussed was– I guess in the ’70s when “Roots” came. The movie “Roots” came about.
Lesley Stahl: That’s the first time?
Karen Dixon-Rexroth: Uh-huh.
Lesley Stahl: When “Roots” was on television?Did you read about it in school?
Fred Miller: N– not much.
His family also remembers “Roots” as pivotal.
Debra Coles: Yes.
Karen Dixon-Rexroth: Mm-hm.
Brenda: I think that’s– that’s where we all–
Karen Dixon-Rexroth: That’s where we all–
Brenda: I think all of us felt like that–
Tonya Miller Pope: That was an eye-opener.
Lesley Stahl: But even after “Roots,” you didn’t go and say, “What about our family?”
Karen Dixon-Rexroth: No. [ALL SHAKE HEADS NO]
Lesley Stahl: Even then–
Karen Dixon-Rexroth: Not at all.
Lesley Stahl: What held you back?
Fred Miller: I just didn’t think they wanted to talk about it.
Lesley Stahl: But didn’t you wanna know?
Fred Miller: I would love to have known. I would love to have known.
Dennis Pogue and Doug Sanford
Fred’s purchase of Sharswood was about to give him a crash course in his hometown’s slavery roots. It started with a call from two archeologists who wanted to come do research.
Dennis Pogue: We’re historic preservationists. And so, you know, we start from the idea that these places matter.
Dennis Pogue once worked at Mt. Vernon; Doug Sanford at Monticello. They asked if they could come explore Sharswood, but they weren’t interested in the ornate house designed by that famous architect. What they cared about was the dilapidated building with the tin roof past the big oak tree behind it. They suspected it had once been slave quarters.
Doug Sanford: There were once hundreds of thousands of these buildings. These were one of the most common types of architecture in Virginia.
But now these buildings are rare, with fewer than 1,500 believed to be still standing. And Pogue and Sanford started a project to search for them. Fred and Karen invited them to come investigate. They examined, measured, and searched for clues. They showed us some of what they found.
Dennis Pogue: These are the kind of nails that we expect to see on buildings before 1800. Hand-made, wrought nails.
Lesley Stahl: Hand-made?
Dennis Pogue: You can actually see the hammer strokes on the head.
Lesley Stahl: Is this the original siding?
Dennis Pogue: These are remnants of the original siding. Absolutely.
They worked from noon to dusk and finally gave Karen and Fred their conclusion.
Dennis Pogue: It’s got a complex history, but we think part of that history, a big part of that history, was it was a– a quarter for enslaved folks.
The former slave quarters on Fred Miller’s property
They say it’s one of the best preserved they’ve seen. They believe it was originally built in the late 1700s as a house for a White family..
Doug Sanford: That’s where the original door was.
And was later divided into two separate, single-room slave dwellings.
Lesley Stahl: Two families?
Doug Sanford: Yeah. One household here. Another enslaved household over there.
Fred Miller: It just showed that it was two different worlds: this front, big, beautiful world here, and lavish; and you go right behind the house and there was a whole different story. It’s kinda crazy for me just to even walk around out there.
Lesley Stahl: Do you own that? Do you own the slave house, too?
Fred Miller: I own the slave house, I do. That’s mine. [SMILE]
Lesley Stahl: Wow.
Fred Miller: Yeah. [LAUGHS, SMILES]
When Fred Miller unwittingly purchased what he now knows to be the Sharswood Plantation House — with slave quarters just behind it — he knew virtually nothing about his own family history. He’d always assumed his ancestors had been enslaved, but it felt to him like an unknowable part of a distant past. Learning about his great grandmother, Sarah Miller, whom his mother had known as a child, piqued his interest. So when he found out her house was still standing, just a few miles away from Sharswood, he asked his mother, Betty Dixon, to go there with him.
Fred Miller: Alright, we’re gonna walk down through here.
Betty’s grandmother Sarah had been the first of their ancestors to be born into freedom shortly after the Civil War.
Betty walking toward house: Last time I saw this cabin, it had no lights. No electricity.
Betty remembers visiting and spending the night here with her grandmother and cousins.
Fred and Betty approaching window: Whoa. What is it, one room?
Fred and Betty outside Sarah’s old house
Sarah’s house didn’t look much bigger than the slave dwelling. Just a single room with a smaller one above it. And no indoor plumbing.
Fred Miller: Come a long ways, huh?
Betty Dixon: Sure did.
Fred Miller: Glad I didn’t have to live in here.
Betty Dixon: Well, had to make it work.
Fred Miller: You want a piece of this wallpaper to take with you?
Betty Dixon: Yeah.
Fred Miller: (rips dangling piece off) Hope the landlord don’t say nothing.
Betty Dixon: Oh lord. There you go.
Sarah Miller is buried in the cemetery of the church the Miller family still attends.
Fred at grave: I’m glad now I can actually come here and see.
But unbeknownst to this Miller family, just five miles up the road in a different church cemetery, was a tombstone that also read “Miller” — a far older one, with names Fred and his family had never heard of, but were about to. In Karen’s search for information about Sharswood, she found a document that mentioned them.
Karen Dixon-Rexroth: It gave the names of the original owners, who was Nathaniel Crenshaw Miller, and also Charles Edwin Miller.
Lesley Stahl: Miller?!
Karen Dixon-Rexroth: Yes. Miller.
Lesley Stahl: Any lightbulbs? (LAUGH) Any wires connect?
Karen Dixon-Rexroth: No, not at that point.
Fred Miller: For me, it didn’t. At that time it still didn’t.
Karen Dixon-Rexroth: Not at that point, it did not.
Others had suspected a connection between the two sets of Millers.
Bill Thompson: Because I was telling Dexter back in ’88…
Bill Thompson says he had mentioned the thought to Dexter 30 years ago.
Bill Thompson: What we had been taught in high school was that when they freed the slaves, they just took the last name of the person that was there, which was Miller. I just had told Dexter, “Dexter, it’s a good chance that your ancestors came off of this farm.”
Dexter Miller: He did. He said that.
Lesley Stahl: So you knew that this was a plantation?
Dexter Miller: I did.
Lesley Stahl: Well, Fred, you said you didn’t know.
Fred Miller: I had no idea.
Lesley Stahl: Dexter, you didn’t tell Fred.
Dexter Miller: I did not tell Fred. I did not tell anyone.
Dexter says he’d kept it to himself, because he hadn’t found any way to prove it. And that’s where this becomes a detective story, with the Miller cousins now on a mission to figure out whether it could be possible that their own ancestors might have been enslaved on the very property Fred now owned. The first step was figuring out who their last enslaved ancestors were. And Sarah Miller’s death certificate held the answer — the names of her parents, David and Violet Miller, who would have been adults at the time of emancipation.
Lesley Stahl: Did you know anything about them?
Karen Dixon-Rexroth: Not at all. Not at all.
Marian Keyes: I didn’t know anything about them. We didn’t–
Even Marian Keyes, who knew Sarah Miller, had never heard their names.
Marian Keyes: Nothing.
Lesley Stahl: Wow.
Marian Keyes: Sure didn’t.
Karice Luck-Brimmer
Karice Luck-Brimmer: I just– I– I want everybody to know.
Enter Karice Luck-Brimmer, a local historian and genealogist. Karen reached out to her to see if she could help.
Lesley Stahl: What are the special challenges looking for the ancestors of African Americans?
Karice Luck-Brimmer: African Americans were not listed by name until the 1870 Census. So before that, they were just a number.
Lesley Stahl: You mean, if they were enslaved, they–
Karice Luck-Brimmer: Yes.
Lesley Stahl: –weren’t listed?
Karice Luck-Brimmer: At all. So really, you’re just looking for any type of tips and clues that you can.
She started by looking at 1860 records for Sharswood’s then owner, N.C. For Nathaniel Crenshaw Miller.
Karice Luck-Brimmer: There he is.
Lesley Stahl: (pointing) N.C. Miller right there, okay.
Karice Luck-Brimmer: Yeah. He had 58 slaves here.
But with only age and gender listed.
Lesley Stahl: You have enslaved people (pointing at ages) 69, 44, 34. And not a single name.
Karice Luck-Brimmer: No names.
There was no way of knowing whether Violet and David were among them, so Karice looked up David and Violet Miller in the 1870 census, the first one after the Civil War, where they finally appeared by name. It showed they were farmhands, that they couldn’t read or write, and it listed their children, including, as Karice showed us, a very young Sarah Miller.
Lesley Stahl: There’s Sarah. She’s one year old.
Karice Luck-Brimmer: One years old.
Lesley Stahl: And this looks like Emily.
Karice Luck-Brimmer: Yes.
Lesley Stahl: She’s three. And here’s Samuel.
Karice Luck-Brimmer: Yeah.
Lesley Stahl: He’s five.
To Karice, that meant Samuel, Sarah’s older brother, was born before emancipation. So Karice searched for him in another historical record called the Virginia Slave Birth Index. Where slave owners had to list births on their property.
And there, under N.C. Miller’s name, was Samuel.
Karice Luck-Brimmer: N.C.
Lesley Stahl: Right.
Karice Luck-Brimmer: And there’s Samuel.
Lesley Stahl: Oh.
Karice Luck-Brimmer: And look at that.
Lesley Stahl: Oh my word.
Karice Luck-Brimmer: It lists Violet as his mother.
It was the genealogy equivalent of a smoking gun.
Lesley Stahl: So this is proof that Violet, Sarah’s mother, was enslaved by–
Karice Luck-Brimmer: Yes.
Lesley Stahl: –N.C. Miller
Karice Luck-Brimmer: Yes.
Lesley Stahl: And this is absolute proof?
Karice Luck-Brimmer: This is absolute, definite proof.
Lesley Stahl: And you were able to tell Karen–
Karice Luck-Brimmer: That her ancestors, David and Violet, were enslaved at Sharswood. [NODS]
Karen Dixon-Rexroth: [NODDING] That was tough.
Lesley Stahl: So did you call Fred?
Karen Dixon-Rexroth: I did. I don’t think he believed me in the beginning.
Fred Miller: I didn’t believe her. (CHUCKLE)
Lesley Stahl: So the connection suddenly is made with your family, slavery, and this house.
Karen Dixon-Rexroth: And this house.
Fred Miller: This house.
Lesley Stahl: And you own it.
Fred Miller: Once I realized that it was actually my blood that was here, it took on a whole new meaning for me. It really saddens me sometimes when I– you know? And I’m up– a lotta times, I’m up wee hours of the night now, just thinking about what happened here.
As news spread through the family, there was sadness, but that’s not all there was.
Tonya Miller Pope: I almost felt like I was losin’ my breath for a moment. It was almost like a feeling of being found.
VOICES: Yes, Uh-huh.
Tonya Miller Pope: This is where I started. And as Black people, we don’t always know where we started.
Lesley Stahl: So here we are, sitting in this house.
Marian Keyes: I can’t believe it. I can’t believe it. That I’m– in the plantation house (LAUGH) of the plantation that my family was enslaved.
Lesley Stahl: You’re laughing as if this cannot be true.
Marian Keyes: Cannot be, that’s right. But it is.
Sonya Womack-Miranda: I felt– I feel complete.
Lesley Stahl: Wow.
Sonya Womack-Miranda: I’m not half of a human being anymore. They make me whole, even if I don’t know them. I felt a connection to them at Sharswood.
Dexter Miller: I touched the tree, I hugged the tree, and I said, “Oh, my God, you was here when my ancestor was here.” I wonder which ancestor of mine has touched the tree. I didn’t know what to say or do, I just hugged the tree. And felt like, “I’m home.”
He shared the news with Bill Thompson, who had had that hunch all those years ago.
Bill Thompson: I look at it that I’ve been a servant to this farm and this house my whole life. And for the Miller family to come back home to my home– our home–
Fred Miller: Our home. Absolutely.
Bill Thompson: –it’s great. It’s a celebration of– of comin’ home.
Debra Coles: This is God.
Adam Miller: Um-hm.
Debra Coles: This is– this is where we’re supposed to be.
Brenda: It’s like a full circle, like it was meant to happen–
Fred Miller: It’s God’s work.
Brenda: To me it’s like it was meant to happen.
The Millers also see the hand of their ancestors in all of this.
Fred Miller: I think they had to be because I did everything– I did everything in my power to (LAUGH) make this fail.
Brenda: To not make it happen. Yeah.
Fred Miller: I tried to mess it up at (LAUGH) every angle. [LAUGH, SMILES]
But those ancestors had one more surprise in store. With all the revelations, there was one question that continued to gnaw at Dexter. Where were his enslaved ancestors buried? So, last winter, he asked Bill.
Dexter Miller: I said, “Bill, there’s one question that’s been bothering me: Where is the slave cemetery?” He said, “Dexter– it’s right over there.” I said, “Right over where?” He said, “You see those trees over there?”
Lesley Stahl: So did you just go right up there then?
Dexter Miller: We went right up there.
The trees Bill Thompson pointed to, just beyond Fred’s property, sure didn’t look like a cemetery. That is, until you start to look closely.
Lesley Stahl: Is that one of them–
Fred Miller: That’s one of ’em right there.
Lesley Stahl: Oh, my gosh–
Fred Miller: And that’s– and that’s one. As you can see this is the– indention right there– the headstone there. Maybe this is a footstone on the other end.
Karen Dixon-Rexroth: Yes.
Lesley Stahl: (GASP)
Fred Miller: It always–
Lesley Stahl: Oh, my–
Fred Miller: –seemed like to be–
Lesley Stahl: Oh, yeah–
Fred Miller: There’s one, yeah, absolutely.
One of the markers in the Sharswood Cemetery
Poking up through the leaves all around us were pointed rocks — some small, some medium-sized. No names, no engraving. Just plain, anonymous markers of many, many lives.
Lesley Stahl: Wow. This is astonishing.
Karen Dixon-Rexroth: It is–
Lesley Stahl: It’s kind of overwhelming, isn’t it?
Fred Miller: It is–
Karen Dixon-Rexroth: It is. It really is. I mean, we all live in the same area, we come past this place, and we would not know that our ancestors were right there beside us the entire time.
Lesley Stahl: Fred, if you hadn’t bought that house–
Karen Dixon-Rexroth: Right. You’re right.
Fred Miller: If I hadn’t–
Lesley Stahl: It would–
Fred Miller: –bought that house we’d never know.
Lesley Stahl: Never–
Karen Dixon-Rexroth: Never.
Lesley Stahl: So how has all of this affected you?
Fred Miller: I get a little– little bit upset sometimes– when I find out things that I should have known already.
Lesley Stahl: Angry at yourself?
Fred Miller: At myself and at the system, because I think that we should have known more.
Lesley Stahl: What about the school system?
Fred Miller: Should have known more.
Lesley Stahl: Family?
Fred Miller: Should have known more, absolutely.
Lesley Stahl: You want the story of slavery told.
Fred Miller: I want the story of slavery told. It’s important.
Fred Miller: So this was converted from a door to a window?
Dennis Pogue: Yeah, yeah–
Fred wants to do whatever’s necessary to preserve the slave house.
Dennis Pogue: You know, this has been exposed for, you know, 200 years.
Fred Miller: Yeah, right.
He’s in the process of setting up a non-profit to make that possible.
Fred Miller: That’s important to me too ’cause I know a whole lotta emphasis is on– on that big, white house there.
Doug Sanford: Well, exactly.
Fred Miller: But this right here is really (LAUGH) near and dear–
Doug Sanford: Well, this is the story–
Fred Miller: –to me, right. Yeah, this is the story–
Doug Sanford: This is–
Fred Miller: –right here.
Doug Sanford: This is your family’s story–
Fred Miller: Yeah, absolutely.
Fred at cemetery: One, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight. There’s eight right here.
And he’s been thinking about the cemetery too.
Fred at cemetery: [BENDS DOWN AND RUBS SMALL STONE] I can imagine this being someone young.
Karen Dixon-Rexroth: We have to do something about this.
Fred Miller: Yeah, have to. And I will. I’m gonna fix it. [HOLDING ONTO TREE]
Lesley Stahl: Do you think you might allow historians to come and–
Fred Miller: Absolutely. Absol– this place will be open to anyone who wants to learn.
Lesley Stahl: Anyone?
Fred Miller: Anyone can come here.
But for now, Sharswood is serving the purpose Fred bought it for in the first place. Gathering the Miller family together in celebration.
Lesley Stahl: What do you think Violet and David would think if they could see that you own this place?
Fred Miller: Yeah, I’m hoping– I’m hoping they would be proud of us, and I think they would be. They endured a lot. I mean, I can’t even imagine what they went through. Looking down on us now, they must be smiling at us.
Since our story first aired, Fred Miller took a new job in Virginia to be closer to his family. He has set up a nonprofit, Sharswood Foundation, to maintain the slave quarters and cemetery, and has begun offering tours of the house.
Produced by Shari Finkelstein and Braden Cleveland Bergan. Associate producer, Collette Richards. Broadcast associate, Wren Woodson. Edited by Daniel J. Glucksman.
In 1848 Ellen Craft, an enslaved woman in Macon, Georgia, feared that her father – who was her White enslaver – would claim any child she bore as his property. And so, she and her husband, also enslaved, embarked on a remarkable ruse: Fleeing the South, she masqueraded as a male White slaveowner accompanied by “his” slave. Correspondent Mark Whitaker talks with Ilyon Woo, author of “Master Slave Husband Wife: An Epic Journey from Slavery to Freedom,” and with Peggy Preacely, the couple’s great-great-granddaughter.
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Dutch Prime Minister Mark Rutte apologized Monday for the Netherlands’ “slavery past,” which he said continues to have “negative effects.”
Rutte’s comments were part of the Dutch government’s wider acknowledgment of the country’s colonial past, and an official response to a report entitled “Chains of the Past” by the Slavery History Dialogue Group, published in July 2021.
“For centuries under Dutch state authority, human dignity was violated in the most horrific way possible,” Rutte said during a speech at the country’s National Archives in The Hague.
“And successive Dutch governments after 1863 failed to adequately see and acknowledge that our slavery past continued to have negative effects and still does. For that I offer the apologies of the Dutch government,” the Dutch prime minister said.
Rutte also spoke briefly in English on Monday, saying: “Today, I apologize.”
“For centuries, the Dutch state and its representatives facilitated, stimulated, preserved, and profited from slavery. For centuries, in the name of the Dutch State, human beings were made into commodities, exploited, and abused,” Rutte said.
He said that slavery must be condemned as “crime against humanity.”
Rutte acknowledged that he had experienced a personal “change in thinking” and said that he was wrong to have thought that the Netherlands’ role in slavery was “a thing of the past.”
“It is true that no one alive now is personally to blame for slavery. But it is also true that the Dutch State, in all its manifestations through history, bears responsibility for the terrible suffering inflicted on enslaved people and their descendants,” he said.
In early 2020, the Dutch government returned a stolen ceremonial crown to the Ethiopian government.
The country profited greatly from the slave trade in the 17th and 18th centuries; one of the roles of the Dutch West India Co. was to transport slaves from Africa to the Americas. The Dutch didn’t ban slavery in its territories until 1863, though it was illegal in the Netherlands.
Dutch traders are estimated to have shipped more than half a million enslaved Africans to the Americas, Reuters reports. Many went to Brazil and the Caribbean, while a considerable number of Asians were enslaved in the Dutch East Indies, which is modern Indonesia, the agency wrote.
Dutch children are however taught little about the role Netherlands played in the the slave trade, Reuters added.
Conversations about the country’s attitude to race have long-surrounded one of its holiday traditions. The character of “Black Pete” typically sees a white person wearing full blackface, an Afro wig, red lipstick and earrings, and is often part of the Netherlands’ St. Nicholas festivities in December.
Rutte in 2020 said the country his views on “Black Pete” had undergone “major changes” – but he wouldn’t go as far as banning it.
LOS ANGELES — While filming “Emancipation,” Will Smith routinely drew inspiration from the words “sacred motivation” that were written on the front page of a script. But the Oscar winner heavily leaned on the phrase even more in recent months, as he tried to overcome the backlash to his Oscars slap and banishment from the ceremony.
“It’s like when you can locate and center yourself in your divine purpose, you can withstand anything and everything,” Smith said of the phrase that greeted him when he took on the lead role in Antoine Fuqua’s “Emancipation,” which is currently in theaters and will be available to stream Friday on Apple TV+. “Sacred motivation” became like a theme for him and his castmates, Smith said.
The film, completed months before Smith strode onto the Oscars stage and slapped presenter Chris Rock for a joke about Smith’s wife, Jada Pinkett-Smith, was a grueling shoot. Inspired by an iconic 1863 photo of the scarred back of “Whipped Peter,” Smith portrays the character Peter — a man who attempts to escape slavery while he uses his wits to dodge slave hunters and brave alligator-infested Louisiana swamps in his quest for freedom.
The photos of “Whipped Peter” were taken during a Union Army medical examination that first appeared in Harper’s Weekly. An image known as “The Scourged Back” showed countless mutilated whip marks on Peter’s bare back that were delivered by his enslavers. The photo contributed to the growing opposition to slavery.
Smith said his character taught him a lesson in overcoming adversity after he faced condemnation, memes and a 10-year Oscars attendance ban. The “slap” seemingly overshadowed his own biggest career milestone, which came later in the night: winning his first-ever Academy Award, best actor for “King Richard.”
The backlash rocked Smith, but Peter ultimately helped steer him back on track too.
“Peter has absolutely helped me through these last few months, just reestablishing within myself in what my purpose is in this world,” Smith said in a recent interview, one of his first since the Oscars. He has repeatedly apologized for his behavior after accepting his ban.
Normally, “Emancipation” might earn Smith some serious Oscars buzz. He’s still eligible for nominations and awards, but can’t personally accept them. Given backlash to “The Slap,” Smith mainly hopes that audiences will still watch Fuqua’s film.
“This movie was so grueling. Literally across the board, everybody had to devote a hefty amount of suffering to what you see on that screen,” Smith said. “So my greatest wish, and I guess I can talk about my greatest fear, is that my team would be penalized for my actions. I’m out with this film that I love and strictly want my people to get their flowers.”
Fuqua knows Smith made a mistake, but he hopes audiences can move past it. The director believes the story about Peter’s search for freedom, fighting to get back to his family and being a catalyst in highlighting the horrific side of slavery in “Emancipation” is much bigger than “The Slap.”
“Peter’s story is so inspiring, especially as a Black man. We go through a lot of things daily, just being Black,” said Fuqua, known for directing “Training Day,” “Equalizer” films and “The Magnificent Seven.” He said his new film tackles how certain elements of racism in America that still occur today.
“For me, it’s a mistake,” Fuqua said of Smith striking Rock on live television. “Hopefully everybody can get back on track and God bless everyone. But we’re talking about 400 years of brutality.”
Bingwa, who plays Peter’s wife Dodienne, credits Smith’s ability to endure the adversity while pushing forward through it.
“It’s in line with the film. I imagine it’s been a tough period,” said Bingwa, who hopes audiences can learn more about Peter’s determination to return home after making a promise. “I don’t want to speak on Will’s behalf, but he’s been an inspiration to so many for so long. I love seeing him with his head held high. Everyone can learn from his experience. I just love the way you took it on the chin, you’re wearing it and walking forward. We’re all human.”
While promoting the film, Smith held private screenings for several influential figures including Rihanna, Tyler Perry, Dave Chappelle, LeBron James and his Los Angeles Lakers teammates along with students at Morehouse College. He garnered a great amount of support from those individuals, giving him somewhat a sigh of relief.
Each time Smith harkened back to Peter’s story, the more he became empowered to share his character’s journey.
“I feel very comfortable in this current situation with this project, with these people,” he said. “I feel cleansed. I feel purified and transformed in many ways. And as one of the lessons from Peter is, ‘Suffering leads to salvation.’ So I am comfortable taking my medicine.”
A version of this story appeared in CNN’s Race Deconstructed newsletter. To get it in your inbox every week, sign up for free here.
Thursday could mark a turning point in Native American history. A hearing is scheduled about Black claims to Native citizenship. More specifically, the hearing will address the long-running demands of the descendants of Black people who were enslaved by the Muscogee (Creek) Nation that they be granted tribal citizenship and corresponding rights.
Following the Civil War, the Muscogee (Creek) Nation was required to accept as citizens the people of African descent it had once enslaved. But a 1979 change to the tribe’s constitution defined citizenship “by blood.” As a result, Black Creeks and their descendants, known as Freedmen, were effectively expelled.
Damario Solomon-Simmons, a civil rights attorney representing the two plaintiffs in the lawsuit, said he feels confident that the Muscogee (Creek) Nation District Court will decide in his favor.
A descendant of Black Creeks, Solomon-Simmons has been involved in the citizenship battle for years. In 2018, he filed a federal lawsuit, but it was dismissed. (His grandmother was a plaintiff, but she died in 2019.)
Solomon-Simmons filed a petition in March 2020, and says that the tribe’s 1979 decision was “completely racist” and “erroneous.”
“It’s 100 percent anti-Black discrimination,” he told CNN. “They’re telling you that if you’re Black and/or (had) enslaved (ancestors), you can’t be a member of our nation.”
Solomon-Simmons said the constitution not only strips Black Creeks of their citizenship – it also prevents them from securing the benefits given to tribal members: health care, education, housing, scholarships, cash assistance and more.
Officials from the Muscogee (Creek) Nation insist the tribe’s citizenship requirements have nothing to do with race.
Spokesman Jason Salsman told CNN in an email that the nation’s citizenship is diverse, and includes Black Americans, Spanish people, Mexicans and Asians.
But he noted that the tribe has a “traumatic history” with people who aren’t Creek by blood and that this is a “challenging issue” for many citizens.
“I can’t speak for the leaders of 43 years ago when this decision took place,” Salsman said. “But it should hardly be surprising that a nation like ours that has endured attempts at extermination, removal and other unjust federal policies enforced by outsiders would seek a constitution that requires Creek Indian ancestry and blood lineage among its citizens and leaders.”
He added, “The matter before the Court is not a question of race but rather to determine whether our government is obligated by treaty to enroll individuals as citizens who are not Creek Indians.”
David Hill, the principal chief of the Muscogee (Creek) Nation, underscored in an April 2021 letter the knottiness of this history, and the significance of confronting it.
“The question of the enrollment status of the descendants of Creek Freedmen is an extremely complex one,” he wrote, “born in an era when African Americans and Native Americans alike faced traumatic injustices at the hands of the US government. … As good leaders, it is important for us to listen, acknowledge and openly engage with our communities and our citizens. When these issues arise, they are opportunities that allow us to reconsider if our policies are still reflective of who we are as a Nation.”
Black Creeks have reason to be hopeful about their cause, which isn’t unique. Just last year, the Cherokee Nation jettisoned from its constitution language that defined citizenship purely by blood.
“The Cherokee Nation’s actions have brought this longstanding issue to a close and have importantly fulfilled their obligations to the Cherokee Freedmen,” Deb Haaland, the first Native American Cabinet secretary, said in a May 2021 statement. “We encourage other Tribes to take similar steps to meet their moral and legal obligations to the Freedmen.”
Here’s a closer look at the citizenship struggles dividing the Muscogee (Creek) Nation:
To understand some of the challenges beleaguering Black Creeks’ in our present day, let’s rewind to the late 18th and early 19th centuries.
During this period, the US government actively sought to “civilize” independent, self-governing tribal nations – Muscogee (Creek), Chickasaw, Choctaw, Seminole and Cherokee – by forcing on them the privatization of land and the use of enslaved people for labor.
Many of these nations, especially the Muscogee (Creek) Nation, didn’t practice slavery in the way people tend to picture the institution.
“It wasn’t chattel slavery, where people would lose their humanity and become property,” Caleb Gayle, a professor of practice at Northeastern University and the author of the 2022 book, “We Refuse to Forget: A True Story of Black Creeks, American Identity and Power,” told CNN. “It was, instead, a practice called kinship slavery. People were still peers. Slave identity wasn’t passed down from generation to generation. People broke bread and were seen as equals.”
He added that a certain level of nuance is necessary when discussing slavery within the context of the Muscogee (Creek) Nation.
“There’s been interaction between Black people and Native American nations for a very long time,” Gayle said. “That connection was further fortified through the project of civilization that the US government enforced again and again.”
In 1866, in the aftermath of the Civil War, peace treaties granted not only emancipation but also tribal citizenship to Black people who had been enslaved by Native American nations.
With the passage of the Dawes Act in 1887, the US government sought to identify who would be on which citizenship roll. Some ended up on the “by blood” roll; others, on the Freedmen roll.
In 1979, when the Muscogee (Creek) Nation altered its constitution, those on the Freedmen roll were no longer able to keep the citizenship status they’d had for decades.
“Even if your ancestors had never been slaves, even if they’d been adopted into the nation, even if they never had the stain of slavery on them, if you were on the Freedmen roll – often because your ancestors looked a certain way – the constitutional change kind of nullified your claim to the citizenship you once had,” Gayle said.
Rhonda Grayson is intimately familiar with this history and its effects. She’s one of the plaintiffs in the lawsuit, and said that her ancestors were enslaved by the Muscogee (Creek) Nation.
She’s among the hundreds of Black Creek descendants who’ve unsuccessfully applied for citizenship since 1979. She applied in 2019, she recalled, but was denied; her appeal also was denied.
Grayson explained that she wants the Muscogee (Creek) Nation to issue an apology to Black Creeks for discarding them.
“My motivation is redemption for my ancestors. They suffered just like any other Native American. They worked and built the Creek Nation to what it is today,” she said. “We’re fighting for our tribal rights. We’re entitled to them.”
The disputes ricocheting throughout the Muscogee (Creek) Nation offer us an opportunity to reconfigure the way we think about identity.
In fact, we may already be starting to see this change.
In February 2021, the Cherokee Nation Supreme Court ruled that the nation had to remove “by blood” from its constitution. The decision meant that the descendants of Black people once enslaved by the Cherokee Nation would have the right to tribal citizenship.
“Freedmen rights are inherent,” as Cherokee Nation Supreme Court Justice Shawna S. Baker wrote in the opinion. “They extend to descendants of Freedmen as a birthright springing from their ancestors’ oppression and displacement as people of color recorded and memorialized in Article 9 of the 1866 Treaty.”
For many, especially Black Creeks, this development extends hope that they might achieve a similar outcome.
Crucially, as citizenship conversations continue, we must maintain precision and sensitivity, Gayle urged.
“It’s important to keep the focus squarely on the culprit that brought us to this point today. And that’s the US government. Its subtle and overt expansion of White supremacy is to blame here. These are two incredibly aggrieved, hyper-marginalized groups,” he said.
In this light, Gayle added, “it’s impossible not to feel where the Muscogee (Creek) Nation is coming from when folks say, ‘We’re tired of being told who we are and being forced to modify and to accommodate.’ And it’s impossible not to feel where Black Creeks are coming from when they say, ‘Yes, we understand that – but we have a shared history that’s so potent and powerful as well.’”
SAN JUAN, Puerto Rico — The U.S. government announced Wednesday that it will detain all imports of sugar and related products made in the Dominican Republic by Central Romana Corporation, Ltd. amid allegations that it uses forced labor.
A U.S. Customs and Border Protection investigation found that the company allegedly isolated workers, withheld wages, fostered abusive working and living conditions and pushed for excessive overtime, the agency said in a news release.
“Manufacturers like Central Romana, who fail to abide by our laws, will face consequences as we root out these inhumane practices from U.S. supply chains,” said AnnMarie Highsmith with the CBP’s Office of Trade.
A spokeswoman for the company did not immediately return a text message seeking comment. La Central Romana, which has long faced those types of accusations, is the Dominican Republic’s largest sugar producer.
The announcement was cheered by activists who have long decried the treatment of tens of thousands of workers who live and work on sprawling sugarcane fields, many of them Haitian migrants or descendants of them.
“This is needed to improve their situation,” Roudy Joseph, a labor rights activist in the Dominican Republic, said in a phone interview. “We’ve been asking for improvements for decades.”
The Associated Press last year visited several sugarcane fields owned by Central Romana where workers complained about a lack of wages, being forced to live in cramped housing that lacked water and restrictive rules including not being allowed to grow a garden to feed their families since transportation to the nearest grocery store miles away was too costly.
Joseph noted that at least 6,000 workers also are demanding pensions they never obtained despite paying their dues.
Sugarcane workers also have organized several protests this year to demand permanent residencies after working for decades in the Dominican Republic as the country cracks down on Haitian migrants under the administration of President Luis Abinader in a move that has drawn heavy international criticism.
Central Romana produced nearly 400,000 tons (363,000 metric tons) of sugar in the harvest period that ended last year after grinding more than 3.4 million tons (3 million metric tons) of cane, according to the company.
The first time I remember seeing someone who looked like me in my school curriculum, I was in fifth grade, and our class was studying a unit on slavery in the United States. In our textbook, there was a photo of a man, turned away from the camera, whose back was gnarled and scarred from being whipped. The next day, my teacher made us sit on the classroom’s carpet in rows, packed together, pretending to be on a slave ship. Anywhere off the carpet was the ocean, and if we made a sound, she would scream and “throw us off.” Some of my classmates had been chosen by our teacher to be “overseers,” and they were in charge of keeping the “slaves” in line. I remember being brought to tears but not being exactly sure why I was crying.
When I told my father what happened, he and a group of other outraged parents confronted the school administration, and my teacher was forced to apologize, and life went on. Except … it didn’t. I felt as if there was now an invisible whip following me and a new fear attached to me that I just couldn’t shake.
As a woman with both Black and Puerto Rican ancestry, I’m still impacted by that moment over a decade later. My earliest memories of learning about my ethnicity and culture in school are associated with being the “other.” I was the “slave,” the sharecropper ― anything but me. It destroyed my self-confidence and made me feel hopeless. It was as if the glass ceiling was suffocating me, and I still struggle with my self-esteem while attempting to make my way in the world.
Even now, I feel the failures of my earlier education as I study political science as a freshman at Columbia University. Today, my classes expose the misinformation and misconceptions that were accepted as truth all throughout my childhood. In my college courses, the fact that slavery was the reason for the Civil War is never debated. Systemic and institutional racism is an actuality – not a hypothetical. It only makes me wonder how many young students could benefit from schools with the resources to teach accurate lessons about not only race but also racism, so that students are prepared for the rigor of higher education ― and to confront and prepare for the often harsh and unfair realities of our world.
Unfortunately, countless children across the country lack these lessons and resources. When schools cannot teach the true history of students of color, it not only dehumanizes them but demeans them as well. A new report by NYU Metro Center found that the three most commonly used elementary-level English Language Arts (ELA) curricula offered only superficial representations of characters of color, one-sided Eurocentric storytelling, and hardly any guidance for teachers to center students’ different cultures and identities. This wasn’t surprising to me, given my own experiences in elementary school.
It wasn’t until the eighth grade that I finally had an instructor who presented an accurate, more complete reflection of my people’s history. My teacher bought 20-plus copies of “Getting Away with Murder: The True Story of the Emmett Till Case” with her own money. Most of my classmates were 14, the same age as Emmett when he was brutally murdered (I was 12), and learning about his life and death at that age was profound for us.
Our teacher allowed us to lead challenging conversations about racism while she acted only as an objective observer. She let us ask questions like, “Does Black privilege exist?” and “How does generational trauma affect us?” By the time we finished “Getting Away with Murder,” students who were often racially insensitive (and at times, offensive) realized the weight behind their words. Students who had never had to confront the color of their skin gained a deeper understanding of its beauty and importance. It was this transformative lesson that established my love for political science. Devastatingly, lessons like this one are now being banned across the country.
“It wasn’t until the eighth grade that I finally had an instructor who presented an accurate, more complete reflection of my people’s history. My teacher bought 20-plus copies of ‘Getting Away with Murder: The True Story of the Emmett Till Case’ with her own money.”
Many people argue that teaching students about racism will make white students feel guilty and ashamed. Fear-mongering rhetoric like this has led to over40 bills since January 2021 that propose censoring classroom conversations on racism and sexism. However, many of the white students in my class transformed their stances on inequality and equity after participating in honest conversations, and I felt safer because of it. Learning is often uncomfortable, but we must lean into that discomfort to become new people. The most important lessons are often the most difficult.
Banning age-appropriate lessons on inequality and failing to include them in core curricula makes all students, including white children, unprepared for a collegiate environment in which the existence of racism is presented as an objective fact. White privilege is a sociological term in my textbook ― not a buzzword relegated to Twitter. How can students excel in learning about something they are told doesn’t exist? What’s more, it makes students unprepared for the real world, where racism and white privilege are thriving and harm all of us, even if that’s not apparent to everyone.
Children should not receive an education they have to heal from, and they should see accurate and diverse representations of their histories and communities no matter what race they are. The teacher who told me to sit cross-legged and pretend I was enslaved didn’t purchase our books with her own money, but my teacher who taught an accurate history did. We need anti-racist education to be fully funded so every student is ready to face the world that awaits them and has a high-quality education that is not dependent on the generosity of one teacher.
Curriculum companies taking billions of dollars in public funds need to be held accountable to provide anti-racist lessons and inclusive materials for teachers. Thankfully, I’m now studying at an institution with professors and textbooks that endeavor to tell the full truth about this country. I believe everyone deserves and needs that chance ― and they shouldn’t have to attend college to get it.
Jaylen Adams (she/her) is a political activist and a Columbia University student. During her high school career, she was president of the Charlotte-Mecklenburg Youth Council, a representative on the Juvenile Crime Prevention Council, and a voice for women on the Title IX Committee. Today, Jaylen is continuing this battle as a first-year student at Columbia University, studying political science-economics and creative writing. She works with Our Turn, a national education reform nonprofit, as an executive fellow. Focusing on strategic development and communicative outreach, Jaylen also works on the Truth(Ed) campaign, which focuses on achieving truthful and culturally inclusive curriculum for all. In her free time, Jaylen loves a cozy book with a warm cup of tea.
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Voters in five states on Tuesday were asked whether to update their states’ constitutions to remove slavery and indentured servitude as potential punishments.
Although the 13th Amendment to the US Constitution prohibited slavery in 1865, it allowed an exception “for crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted,” and the proposed amendments asked voters to either explicitly rule out slavery and indentured servitude as potential punishments or remove the terms from state law altogether.
Voters in four states agreed to strike the punishment from the books, CNN projects, while the effort fell short in one.
Voters in Alabama approved a ballot measure that will overhaul the state’s constitution to rid it of racist language and make the constitution more accessible to Alabama’s citizens, CNN projects. One of the revisions in the overhaul will remove an exception clause as it applies to slavery and indentured servitude, changing the text of the constitution from:
That no form of slavery shall exist in this state; and there shall not be any involuntary servitude, otherwise than for the punishment of crime, of which the party shall have been duly convicted.
To:
That no form of slavery shall exist in this state; and there shall not be any involuntary servitude.
Voters in Oregon approved a ballot measure to remove “all language creating an exception” and make “the prohibition against slavery and involuntary servitude unequivocal.”
As part of the initiative, the Oregon Constitution was amended to allow “programs to be ordered as part of sentencing,” such as ones for education, counseling, treatment and community service.
Tennessee voters approved a measure to amend the state’s constitution to say slavery and indentured servitude shall be “forever prohibited,” CNN projects.
In Vermont, a measure to amend the constitution passed, CNN projects.
Although Vermont was the first state to outlaw slavery, the proposal sought to remove text that read “no person born in this country, or brought from oversea, ought to be holden by law, to serve any person as a servant, slave or apprentice, after arriving to the age of twenty-one years, unless bound by the person’s own consent, after arriving to such age, or bound by law for the payment of debts, damages, fines, costs, or the like.”
Louisiana voters rejected an amendment that would have changed the state’s constitution by explicitly prohibiting the punishments, CNN projects.
Louisiana voters had been asked to mark yes or no to the question, “Do you support an amendment to prohibit the use of involuntary servitude except as it applies to the otherwise lawful administration of criminal justice?”
An Australian man already sentenced to life in prison in the Philippines for human trafficking and rape has been given an extra 129-year sentence for sexually abusing children as young as 18 months, according to prosecutors.
Peter Gerard Scully, his Filipina girlfriend Lezyl Margallo, and two accomplices were charged with 60 offenses that included child abuse, trafficking, rape and syndicating child pornography, Merlynn Barola-Uy, a prosecutor in the southern city of Cagayan de Oro, told CNN on Wednesday.
Margallo was sentenced to 126 years in prison, while the two accomplices received prison terms of nine years each.
All four were sentenced on November 3 after entering a plea bargaining agreement, Barola-Uy said, describing the convictions as a “sweet victory.”
“The victim-survivors and their families together with the prosecution team have been, since day one, consistent in their resolve to fight Peter Scully and slay every (delaying) tactic he employed,” the prosecutor said.
“They all want to bring closure to this dark phase of their lives and move on,” Barola-Uy added.
The offenses date back to 2012 and are among dozens of charges filed against Scully after his arrest in 2015.
In 2018, the Australian and his former live-in partner Carme Ann Alvarez were sentenced to life in prison for human trafficking and rape in six cases involving seven children – one of whom was killed and buried in one of the couple’s rented houses in Surigao City, according to state-run Philippine News Agency (PNA).
The cases against Scully have thrown the spotlight on the Philippines’ enduring struggle against the online sexual exploitation of children.
In 2020, a report by the Washington-based International Justice Mission described the Philippines as a global dark spot for online sexual abuse, saying youths were vulnerable due to a combination of entrenched poverty, high internet connectivity and opaque international cash transfer systems.
Two years later, a study by UNICEF, Interpol and ECPAT International, a global network of organizations against children sexual exploitation, found around 20% of Filipino children who used the internet and were aged between 12 and 17 had experienced some form of online sexual abuse.
In August, members of President Ferdinand “Bongbong” Marcos Jr.’s cabinet told a news conference the country had declared “all-out war” on the sexual exploitation of children online.
Justice Secretary Jesus Crispin Remulla vowed at the conference to prosecute and jail people who sexually exploited minors online, but did not detail how the law and its enforcement might be strengthened.
Seven Black men were lynched in Posey County, Indiana, in 1878. It was the largest lynching in state history. Yet the whole incident had been largely forgotten — until a 17-year-old girl heard about it. Steve Hartman shares more in “On the Road.”
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