Denver City Council considers opening every meeting with a mandatory 'slavery acknowledgment'

Denver City Council is considering opening its meetings with a formal statement acknowledging the history of enslaved Africans and their descendants, a proposal that has sparked debate over how governments should address the legacy of slavery, per the Denver Post. Colorado was never a slave state and became part of the union after the Civil War. 

The proposed “labor acknowledgment,” introduced last fall by Councilmember Shontel Lewis, would recognize the lasting impact of slavery, the transatlantic slave trade, and racial segregation while affirming the city’s commitment to addressing inequalities that continue today.

Some of the language reads as follows:

The country’s economy, infrastructure, and generational wealth “would not exist as they do today without the stolen and forced labor of enslaved Africans and their descendants who suffered the horror of the transatlantic trafficking, chattel slavery, and, later on, dehumanization through segregation and Jim Crow laws.”

NPS stated in 2024 that "While Colorado was never a slave-state, becoming part of the Union after the Civil War, the shadow of slavery was ever present. From the entrenched KKK in state and local politics, the practice of redlining and the inequities of having property, systemic racism is something the state is still grappling with today." 

Lewis has spent months working with the Denver African American Commission, Justice for Black Coloradans, and other community organizations to refine the language.

The Denver Post also reports that Lewis has also filed to run as a DSA-backed Democratic candidate for Denver mayor, and her government website describes her as “an unapologetic, Black, Queer Womxn grounded in her values of love and humanity.”

As a councilwoman, Lewis has consistently pushed progressive priorities. She has been an outspoken critic of police use of force, opposed the concentration of homeless shelters in northeast Denver, and voted against multiple Salvation Army contracts for homeless services, Denverite reports.

During her earlier time on the RTD board, she was the sole vote in favor of ending the agency’s private security and off-duty police contracts in favor of mental health alternatives., per the Colorado Sun. The slavery acknowledgment fits the same pattern of centering historical and racial framing in her approach to local government.