; Whereas the full length of legalized slavery’s impact on Black wealth creation and well-being today, including the nearly 300 years of chattel slavery from the year 1502, when enslaved Africans were brought to Hispaniola and later their descendants brought to United States territory, to the year 1789, when the first Congress met, must be recognized and fully accounted for; Whereas, over the course of nearly 300 years, at least 12,500,000 Africans were kidnapped from their homelands by European traders and forcibly brought across the Atlantic Ocean in one of the largest forced displacements in human history, and at least 2,000,000 did not survive the horrifying, brutal, and grueling journey across the Atlantic, also known as the Middle Passage and Maafa; Whereas forcibly separating Black families, often with members being transferred to the Caribbean, was a murderous and tortuous reality for millions of enslaved people who had to endure separation from loved ones they could no longer talk to or keep in contact with, perpetuating deep psychological and emotional trauma; Whereas Spanish colonizers brought enslaved Africans to modern-day Florida in 1565; Whereas 1619, a year before the Mayflower arrived on American shores, marked the first year White Virginians purchased around 30 enslaved Angolans from Portuguese traders who were forcefully transported through the trans-Atlantic slave trade, thereafter launching a violent system of racial subjugation, exploitation, and genocide; Whereas, from the Nation’s founding in 1776, Federal policies produced and sustained the institution of slavery, thus voluntarily accepting the British legacy of the institution, and with it, the responsibility to provide reparations; Whereas the Founders in drafting the Constitution preserved slavery and racialized social stratification through systemic measures, without needing to explicitly mention harmful intent and racialized impacts