Dallas County, Texas has officially endorsed the position that African-Americans deserve reparations for slavery, after the Dallas County Commissioners Court unintentionally cast a unanimous vote in favor of a resolution this week, according to the Dallas Morning News.
The "Juneteenth Resolution" was written by the court's only black commissioner, John Wiley Price, who drafted it in honor of Juneteenth, a holiday especially popular in Texas marking the day Union forces arrived in Galveston to liberate the slaves more than two years after the Emancipation Proclamation.
The Dallas Morning News reported that Price read the resolution aloud Tuesday, which included references to slavery, Jim Crow and even predatory lending practices, along with a final line that the harsh conditions African-Americans were subjected to should be “satisfied with monetary and substantial reparations.”
But Price's fellow commissioners did not appear to listen closely to the language, approving it unanimously in a voice vote during Tuesday's meeting.
After realizing the resolution included language voicing support for reparations for slavery, Mike Cantrell, the court’s only Republican commissioner, changed his vote to abstention.
“The reason why I didn’t abstain this morning is that I had not received a copy of the resolution,” Cantrell told The Dallas Morning News.
The Republican Party of Texas officially declared its opposition to "any form" of reparations in its party platform just this week.
Other commissioners complained, according to The Dallas Morning News, that they had not been given a copy of the resolution in advance. Price told the paper he was inspired to write the resolution after reading a much-discussed article published by The Atlantic last month, which made the case for reparations.