Recognizing the historic abolitionist events surrounding the Pearl, and honoring its legacy in American history.

Honors the 1848 Pearl escape and the people who sought freedom. This resolution would recount the April 1848 attempt by 77 enslaved people to flee aboard the schooner Pearl, name key participants including free Black organizers Paul Jennings and Paul Edmonson, captain Daniel Drayton, financier Gerrit Smith, and allies like William Chaplin and Henry Ward Beecher’s Plymouth Congregational Church, and recognize the episode as an important moment in the history of the District of Columbia and American abolitionism that helped inspire Uncle Tom’s Cabin.