[Congressional Record Volume 151, Number 81 (Friday, June 17, 2005)]
[Extensions of Remarks]
[Page E1277]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                            JUNETEENTH, 2005

                                 ______
                                 

                             HON. TOM DeLAY

                                of texas

                    in the house of representatives

                         Friday, June 17, 2005

  Mr. DeLAY. Mr. Speaker, it has been 140 years now since the United 
States finally severed its ties with the ancient inhumanity of slavery.
  At the end of a great civil war--a war fought over slavery and won to 
eradicate the ``curious institution''--600,000 Americans were dead, but 
4 million were freed.
  The last of those 4 million were freed 140 years ago Sunday, June 
19th, 1865, in Galveston, Texas--by a man named Gordon Granger.
  On his arrival in Galveston, Major General Granger of the United 
States Army, issued General Order Number Three to the people of Texas, 
informing them of the end of the war and the emancipation of slaves.
  As he read the words of President Lincoln's self-consciously 
legalistic Emancipation Proclamation, the world changed in front of 
him:
  ``This [order] involves an absolute equality of rights and rights of 
property between former masters and slaves, and the connection 
heretofore existing between them becomes that between employer and free 
laborer.''
  The United States, the first nation in history ``conceived in liberty 
and founded on the proposition that all men are created equal,'' was, 
at long last, fulfilling that conception and proposition for the 
millions of African-Americans whose freedom had theretofore been 
denied.
  Juneteenth, then, is not merely a celebration for African-Americans, 
or for Texans--it is a celebration for all men in all times.
  It should instead be a celebration of humanity itself, and of the 
human race's universal yearning to be free.
  How many Americans--black and white--joined in arms decades after 
emancipation, to pass along the gift of human freedom to the continent 
of Europe in World War II?
  How many more risked and gave their lives together in the Cold War 
against communist aggression?
  How many more today are serving together to bring a new emancipation 
to the people of Afghanistan and Iraq, who for too long have suffered 
under slave-like conditions at the hands of their oppressors?
  The answer? As many as it takes.
  Americans of all races today are joined in our hope for the freedom 
of all mankind, and will stand united against any enemy who would deny 
any people their human rights.
  Juneteenth, then, is a reminder not simply of the great freedom won 
140 years ago, but of the great freedom to be secured in the coming 
years, around the world.

                          ____________________