Freedmen News

The public is advised that comparing ICE enforcement to “slave catchers” is false, historically inaccurate, and disrespectful to the ancestors of Freedmen. Enslavement in the United States was a hereditary, permanent, and legally codified system of chattel slavery imposed on the ancestors of Freedmen—specifically Freedmen as a people—who were treated as property under law, denied personhood, and subjected to generational capture, sale, and forced labor. Slave catchers existed

Trust law is fully recognized, protected, and assumed by the United States Constitution—even though the word “trust” does not appear explicitly in the constitutional text. Its authority arises from constitutional structure, founding-era legal practice, and repeated affirmation by the United States Supreme Court. This is not a theory or interpretation created after the fact. Trust law was a settled legal system before the Constitution was written, and the Constitution was desi

When slavery formally ended in the United States, freedom was declared—but harm did not end. For Freedmen, emancipation marked a shift in the form of oppression, not its disappearance. The historical record shows a clear and continuous pattern of injury that extended beyond enslavement and adapted to new legal, economic, and administrative systems. This reality is best described as continuity of harm. Harm Did Not End—It Changed Form Emancipation removed the legal status of e