20 Apr 2021
Rep. Burgess Owens (R-UT) said it was “disgusting and offensive” for Democrats including President Joe Biden to frame Georgia’s new election law as reminiscent of Jim Crow laws during his testimony before the Senate Judiciary Committee’s hearing entitled, “Jim Crow 2021: The Latest Assault on the Right to Vote.”
Owens stated:
As someone who’s actually experienced Jim Crow laws, I’d like to set the record straight on the myth regarding the recently passed Georgia State law, and why any comparison between this law and Jim Crow is absolutely outrageous.
I’ll give you a few examples from my own life of what Jim Crow laws actually looked like.
Senate Judiciary Committee
Tuesday,
condemned recent attacks on Georgia’s election law that characterized it as a “Jim Crow” measure. Read the lightly edited transcript, below, or watch the video above.
Thank you, Chairman [Dick] Durbin, Ranking Member [Chuck] Grassley, and the members of the committee for the invitation to join you today at this hearing.
My American story begins with my great-great-grandfather, Sals Burgess, who arrived in America as a child shackled in the belly of a slave ship. Sals was sold on an auction block with his mother in Charleston, South Carolina, to the Burgess plantation. He escaped through the Underground Railroad and later became a successful entrepreneur, purchasing 102 acres of farmland paid off in two years.