The Number 43

 

Ahead of Juneteenth this year, Kentucky's governor did something rare. He looked back at history and found 43 people who had been locked away for helping enslaved men, women, and children escape to freedom. Elijah Anderson. Julett Miles. Thomas Brown. Forty of others. Men and women who broke an unjust law because a just one didn't exist yet. Some died in prison for it. All of them waited more than a century to be called what they always were. Heroes, not criminals.

The governor pardoned all 43. It took more than a hundred years. Justice came, but it came too late for them to feel it. That's the part that stays with us.

We are 43 too.

We didn't plan that. None of us chose the number. We found each other on X, one story at a time, each of us carrying a case that never should have ended the way it did. By the time we counted, there were 43 of us. We noticed the coincidence. We're not going to pretend it means something mystical. But we can't stop thinking about what it does mean.

It means a government can look at a pile of cases nobody wants to touch and decide they're worth seeing. It's happened before. Forty-three times, in fact, in one state, in one week.

Our situation is not their situation. Nobody in our group is claiming what those 43 Kentuckians lived through. What connects us is simpler and it's this: injustice, and how long it takes to be seen.

We're a nurse who spent her life caring for other people's families and is set to lose twenty years with her own. We're a father who will miss eleven years of his kids growing up. None of us are charged with a violent crime. Our cases are regulatory. Paperwork. Some of us were prosecuted under new legal theories applied to things that happened before any rule said they were wrong. We are parents, small business owners, neighbors. We are not asking anyone to compare our stories to the Underground Railroad. That history belongs to the people who lived it and died for it. What we're asking is smaller and it's simple. If 43 forgotten names could be found and cleared once, ours can be reviewed too. We just don't want it to take a hundred years.

We don't have lobbyists. We don't have money to buy our way onto anyone's desk. What we have is what those 43 Kentuckians eventually got, after too long. The truth, written down, waiting for someone to read it.

President Trump has said he believes in using the pardon power to fix a system that lost its way. We believe him. We're asking for the review, not the outcome. Look at the documented cases. Decide on the merit.

You can read every one of our stories at

250pardons.com

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#43Americans

on X, and our YouTube channel, 43 Americans. Share one story with one person today, your mother, your coworker, your neighbor. That's how 43 people go from invisible to impossible to ignore.

Forty-three names were buried once. They were found. We're hoping we will be too.

Angelica Pacheco

@AngiePachecoFL

Former Hialeah Councilwoman & RN. Targeted for "deterrent effect" — the DOJ's own words. Survivor of a weaponized system. #43Americans  Never lose faith.