HR0453 103RD GENERAL ASSEMBLY

HR0453 LRB103 34799 ECR 64650 r

HOUSE RESOLUTION

WHEREAS, Slavery provided much of the revenue for the young State of Illinois and severed ties between enslaved people and their ancestors, resulting in the erasure of family histories for both enslaved people and their descendants; and

WHEREAS, The U.S. has a social responsibility and duty towards African American descendants of enslaved individuals to provide the public service of assisting Black citizens in reconnecting with their ancestral history; the State of Illinois has an equal responsibility to Black Illinoisans; and

WHEREAS, Although Illinois is a northern state, slavery was prevalent within its boundaries before the Northwest Ordinance of 1787, and enslaved individuals still worked the salt springs of the Illinois Salines until 1825; slavery in the Illinois Salines was permitted because it provided as much as a third of the yearly revenue for the young State; indentured servitude at the salt springs continued until 1870; this history of slavery in Illinois deepens the responsibility of the State to assist African American citizens in recovering their lost history; and

WHEREAS, Since the first direct-to-consumer genetic ancestry test was pioneered in 2000, technological capabilities have vastly improved, enabling refined genetic genealogy that can trace ancestral connections over the past 500 years; given this advancement in technology, the U.S., honoring its moral obligation to descendants of enslaved Africans, is now exceptionally positioned to facilitate this reconnection through a genealogy-based pilot program; and

WHEREAS, In addition to restoring a sense of personal belonging and ethnic identity, both being critical for psychological well-being, genetic genealogical evidence provides descendants of enslaved African Americans with robust genetic evidentiary support of their African family origins; several African countries, including Ghana, Sierra Leone, Gabon, and Eritrea have begun offering citizenship to individuals who can trace their ancestry back to their respective country, including ancestry traced through genetic genealogy; improvements in genetic genealogical technology provide new found support for the desire expressed by president Abraham Lincoln in the Emancipation Proclamation to establish a voluntary repatriation program for African descendants to return to their African ancestral homelands; and

WHEREAS, Nearly all Black Americans can successfully trace their genetic ancestry to one or more African countries; today, there are currently 42 million African American descendants of those enslaved in the U.S.; the genetic analyses completed in the Genetic Consequences of the Transatlantic Slave Trade in the Americas study by Steven Micheletti and colleagues found that African Americans tend to have ancestry from four main regions in Atlantic Africa, including Nigeria, Senegambia (Gambia, Guinea, Guinea-Bissau, and Senegal), Coastal West Africa (Sierra Leone, Ghana, Côte d'Ivoire, and Liberia), and the Congo region, which includes Angola and the Democratic Republic of the Congo; approximately 71% of African American 23andMe research participants had detectable segments of DNA that are identical with current ethnolinguistic groups from all four Atlantic African regions stemming from a common ancestor; as documented by Jazlyn Mooney and her colleagues in their study On the Number of Genealogical Ancestors Tracing to the Source Groups of an Admixed Population, there is a high probability, over 97.5%, that an average African American can trace their ancestry back to at least one African ancestor from each of eight to 12 generations ago culminating in an approximate total of 269 African ancestors within this timeframe; and

WHEREAS, Approximately 15% of Black adults in the U.S. have taken consumer genetic genealogy tests; African Americans should not be economically burdened to obtain information regarding their ancestral history, which was forcibly taken from them through practices of slavery that economically benefited the growing United States; and

WHEREAS, Reparations has been granted towards other groups residing in the U.S., yet African Americans have never been compensated to redress the racial harms enacted upon their person during times of slavery; while white slave owners were compensated for the emancipation of their slaves, enslaved individuals only had access to social support via the Freedmen's Bureau Act of 1865 and 1866, which provided basic needs including food, clothing, and shelter, due to the displacement of southerners after the Civil War; while the Evacuation Claims Act of 1948 and the Civil Liberties Act of 1988 paid reparations to Japanese Americans, up to $20,000 per survivor, and the Indian Claims Commission allocates approximately $1,000 per person, enslaved persons of African descent and their descendants have never received monetary compensation for the atrocities committed against them prior to the abolishment of slavery; this is despite there having been over 10 million African Americans human trafficked from their families and homeland only to be forced to build the infrastructure of America and generate wealth for early white Americans; in 1989, H.R. 40 was introduced to establish a commission to investigate the impacts of enslavement and to evaluate proposals for reparation; though this resolution has been introduced for decades, it has not been passed; and

WHEREAS, It is technologically straightforward and a moral imperative to rectify the erasure of family histories resulting from slavery; it is now possible to establish a family roots genealogy pilot program that can equip descendants of enslaved African Americans with robust genetic evidentiary support of their African family origins; Dr. LaKisha David, an assistant professor at the University of Illinois (U of I) Urbana-Champaign in the Department of Anthropology, is a distinguished expert on reuniting African Americans with long lost kin in Africa through autosomal DNA genetic testing; she is a former postdoctoral fellow of Ethical, Legal, and Social Implications of Genetics and Genomics at the University of Pennsylvania's Perelman School of Medicine; she will be the principal investigator in establishing this genealogy-based family roots program; U of I's Department of Anthropology has expressed their commitment to these efforts and interest in ways they can continue to serve both reparative and decolonizing efforts of the State more generally; and

WHEREAS, The procedure will begin with the collection of saliva samples that will be processed at The Illinois Roy J. Carver Biotechnology Center, situated in Urbana, pending appropriation funding; once the processing is completed, the saliva samples will be securely destroyed; the resulting data will then be transferred to Nightingale, a high-performance computer cluster designed for sensitive data that is housed in the National Center for Supercomputing (NCSA) at the U of I at Urbana Champaign; using Nightingale ensures secure storage and provides powerful computation while adhering to the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act of 1996 (HIPAA) regulations; the sample will be accompanied by a unique identifying code rather than participants' personal information; nongenetic data for this project will be stored in the U of I at Urbana-Champaign Research Electronic Data Capture (REDCap), a highly secure and robust web-based research data collection and management system; Illinois REDCap is among the systems and services that meet requirements established by HIPAA; participants logging in will receive results that are hosted on a HIPAA-compliant platform; for the protection of all participants, DNA samples collected may not be subjected for subpoenas or accessed for any other purposes; and

WHEREAS, Researchers cannot release or use information, documents, or samples that may identify participants in any action or suit unless the participant consents; researchers also cannot provide data as evidence unless participants have agreed; this protection includes federal, state, local, civil, criminal, administrative, legislative, or other proceedings; this does not stop participants from willingly releasing information about their involvement in this research and does not prevent participants from having access to their own information; and

WHEREAS, The U of I at Urbana-Champaign, established as a land-grant institution through the Morrill Act of 1862, was entrusted with a mission to democratize higher education and serve the public interest across Illinois and beyond; despite this intent, U of I's historical record is marked by periods of exclusion and insufficient representation of African Americans that cast a shadow over its commitment to true inclusivity; these specialized centers, backed by the State of Illinois, hold the potential to make amends and realign with the original vision of the land-grant mission; the centers carry a paramount duty to redress past neglect, actively engage with the African American community, and to emphasize the profound need to reconnect individuals to their ancestral roots; through this initiative, the centers have an opportunity, and indeed an obligation, to play a transformative role in facilitating understanding, reconnection, and healing, and, in doing so, work towards rectifying the U of I's historical shortcomings in relation to a community with a deeply impactful, yet often sidelined, history; therefore, be it

RESOLVED, BY THE HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES OF THE ONE HUNDRED THIRD GENERAL ASSEMBLY OF THE STATE OF ILLINOIS, that we urge support for the Family Roots Genealogy Pilot Program as it provides African American descendants of enslaved individuals the opportunity to trace their roots back to their ancestral homelands, to reconnect with their ancestral heritage, and to promote their well-being; and be it further

RESOLVED, That a copy of this resolution be presented to the Family Roots Genealogy Pilot Program as a symbol of our esteem and respect.