; Whereas Reconstruction represented a significant but constrained moment of advances for Black rights as epitomized by the Freedman’s Bureau, which negotiated labor contracts for ex-enslaved people but failed to secure their own land for them; Whereas the brutal overthrow of Reconstruction failed all individuals in the United States by failing to ensure the safety and security of African Americans and by emboldening States and municipalities in both the North and South to enact numerous laws and policies to stymie the socioeconomic mobility and political voice of freed Blacks, thus maintaining their subservience to Whites; Whereas Reconstruction, the civil rights movement, and other efforts to redress the grievances of marginalized people were sabotaged, both intentionally and unintentionally, by those in power, thus rendering the accomplishments of those efforts transitory and unsustainable, and further embedding the racial hierarchy in society; Whereas examples of government actions directed against populations of color (referred to in this resolution as discriminatory government actions ) include— (1) the creation of the Federal Housing Administration, which adopted specific policies designed to incentivize residential segregation; (2) the enactment of legislation creating the Social Security program, for which most African Americans were purposely rendered ineligible during its first two decades; (3) the Servicemen’s Readjustment Act of 1944 (commonly known as the GI Bill of Rights; 58 Stat. 284, chapter 268), which left administration of its programs to the States, thus enabling blatant discrimination against African-American veterans; (4) the Fair Labor Standards Act of 1938, which allowed labor unions to discriminate based on race; (5) subprime lending aimed purposefully at families of color; (6) disenfranchisement of Native Americans, who, until 1924, were denied citizenship on land Native Americans had occupied for millennia