This action will correct the disservice committed against our African and African American Ancestors taken from their native lands and made to die without citizenship in the country they built. This petition asks the U. S. House of Representatives to move swiftly to grant posthumous citizenship for all enslaved Africans brought to America who died without citizenship until the ratification of the 14th Amendment in July 1868 transformed national belonging, and made African Americans, and indeed all those born on U.S. soil, citizens. That’s over 200 plus years of human beings stripped from their native countries to build America and dying without the right of citizenship.

The Dred Scott case illuminates it best. Dred Scott first went to trial to sue for his freedom in 1847. Ten years later, after a decade of appeals and court reversals, his case was finally brought before the United States Supreme Court. In what is perhaps the most infamous case in its history, THE COURT DECIDED THAT ALL PEOPLE OF AFRICAN ANCESTRY, SLAVES AS WELL AS THOSE WHO WERE FREE, COULD NEVER BECOME CITIZENS OF THE UNITED STATES and therefore could not sue in federal court. The court also ruled that the federal government did not have the power to prohibit slavery in its territories. Scott and all other enslaved people, needless to say, remained enslaved and classified as non citizens.