Attachment 6 EDNY Hodge v Cuomo 21-cv-01421 Complaint

Case 1:21-cv-01421-NGG Case MDL No. 3011 Document 1 25-6 Filed 03/17/21 Filed 06/24/21 Page 12 Page of 154 12 of PageID 154 #: 268
the U.S. Constitution. Conkling was instrumental to not only implementing
emancipation which was granted by the 13th Amendment, but also equal protection of
the laws afforded to all persons by the 14th Amendment. The 14th Amendment, drafted
by committee, was ratified in 1866. Conkling was a principal contributor on the
Committee drafting the 14th Amendment and its equal protection and due process
clauses.
Conkling tried to pursue the Lincoln vision, but the 10 years after Lincoln’s
assassination, the 10 years following Lincoln’s vision of apprenticeship for freed people,
were 10 years of anarchy and lawlessness which brought President Ulysses S. Grant and
his close friend Conkling to utter frustration. Reconstruction was failing. Conkling and
Grant accomplished the Ku Klux Klan Act of 1871 which is now codified at 42 U.S.C. 1983
with its companion sections 42 U.S.C. 1981 and 42 U.S.C. 1985, to provide a remedy
against abuse of government authority and to enforce the provisions of the United States
Constitution.
It was then that US Senator Francis Kernan, on an Electoral Commission to settle
the Presidential Election of 1876, cast a deciding vote to accomplishing the compromise
of 1877 to preserve the Union, end Reconstruction, and bring the southern states behind
a compromise presidential candidate - Rutherford B. Hayes. Apprenticeship for freed
people was lost, the apprenticeship plank of Reconstruction was abandoned in the
compromise of 1877 which ended Reconstruction. Conkling had declined a seat on the
committee knowing what the outcome was sure to be – there would be an abandonment
of all efforts to provide equality. Conkling later became lost as a dark figure of graft and
corruption at the New York City Customs House, finally dying in the blizzard of 1888
walking from his office at Wall Street to Union Square. A sorry end, Conkling lost the
fervor of his moral compass. Frederick Douglas, one of the first emerging slave to civil
rights leaders, an apprentice himself mentored by Conkling, eulogized Conkling: “the
country’s loss is great, but let us hope that men will yet be found as true to the cause of
justice, liberty and equality”.
Apprenticeship did not again resurface for the benefit of freed persons until the
Percy Class sued in 1973 to eliminate discrimination in economic opportunity, eliminate
segregation and eliminate disparate opportunity. The Percy v. Brennan lawsuit followed
as a result of the civil rights movements of the 1960s. Percy as a Class now complains
that if the Class had gotten what was long ago a vision called apprenticeship, a vision not
fulfilled even 154 years later, the world would be a much different place today.
Franklin Roosevelt
Apprenticeship was not formalized as a federally adopted structured program
until the National Apprenticeship Act of 1937, and even then, was not used as an
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