; Whereas the horrors of chattel slavery are immeasurable and have led to generational trauma for millions of Black people; Whereas enslaved people were prohibited and denied the right to maintain their indigenous languages, faiths, and cultural practices and traditions from Africa; Whereas the most productive enslaved people were often whipped the most violently and were often used as breeders to save slave owners from purchasing enslaved persons; Whereas the ban on importation of Africans for enslavement was implemented in 1808, driving trade underground and increasing the numbers of enslaved people through childbirth as the sole method available; Whereas millions of enslaved Black women were routinely raped, sexually assaulted, and tortured at the hands of their White enslavers, and others were purchased and forced to staff brothels, all of which reinforced White male dominance and gender hierarchy; Whereas the rape of enslaved Black women grew so routine that some have calculated that over 60 percent of enslaved women and girls experienced sexual coercion and rape in their lives, and that 1 out of every 6 Black persons born into captivity in 1860 was born as a byproduct of the rape of a young, teenage, enslaved girl; Whereas infant mortality rates on plantations were incredibly high, and in the South, 50 percent of enslaved infants were stillborn or died within the first year of life in the early 1800s; Whereas the enslavement of Black people became an indispensable economic driver in the United States, allowing White Americans in both the South and the North to enjoy the profit of unpaid and dehumanizing labor