[Congressional Record Volume 156, Number 91 (Thursday, June 17, 2010)]
[Senate]
[Page S5104]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                               JUNETEENTH

  Mr. CARDIN. Mr. President, I rise today in celebration of the 145th 
anniversary of Juneteenth, the oldest commemoration of the end of 
slavery in the United States. On June 19, 1865, Union soldiers arrived 
in Galveston, TX, to inform the slaves that they were free. Although 
the Emancipation Proclamation took effect on January 1, 1863, it was 2 
years later before the message reached slaves in Texas and the Union 
troops enforced the President's order. Eighty-nine years after 
America's Independence Day, Africans in America finally obtained their 
independence from slavery. Juneteenth is a day when all Americans 
should celebrate Black Americans' freedom and heritage.
  In 2008, Congress apologized for the injustice, cruelty, brutality, 
and inhumanity of slavery and Jim Crow laws. The congressional 
resolution acknowledged that African Americans continue to suffer from 
the complex interplay between slavery and Jim Crow long after both 
systems were formally abolished. This suffering is both tangible and 
intangible, including the loss of human dignity, the frustration of 
careers and professional lives, and the long-term loss of income and 
opportunity.
  On Wednesday, Congress honored the African-American slaves who built 
the U.S. Capitol by dedicating plaques to their memory. Historians have 
discovered that slaves worked 12-hour days, 6 days a week on the 
construction of the Capitol. The Federal Government rented over 400 
slaves from local slave owners at a rate of $5 per person per month, 
but the slaves were not paid for their work.
  On this day, it is fitting to remember our Nation's painful history. 
Millions of Africans were torn from their homeland and brought to the 
Americas as chattel. While it is unknown how many died during the 
middle passage, it is estimated that 645,000 arrived in the United 
States. My own State of Maryland had slaves. In 1790, more than 100,000 
slaves, which would have been about a third of the State's total 
population, lived in Maryland. Seventy years later, the 1860 census 
indicated that there were more than 4 million slaves nationwide.
  Despite Maryland's history of slavery, many Marylanders led the fight 
for abolition. The underground railroad was a secret network that 
helped enslaved men, women, and children escape to freedom. Its route 
through Maryland took passengers by boat up the Chesapeake Bay. Ships 
departed from the many towns located directly on the bay and from 
cities on rivers that flowed into the bay, including Baltimore. Many 
ships' pilots hid fugitives and helped them on their way.
  Another route led slaves by land up along the eastern shore of 
Maryland and into Delaware, where they could cross into Pennsylvania 
and go north to freedom in Massachusetts, New York, and Canada. This 
was the route used by Harriet Ross Tubman, a native of Dorchester 
County, MD. Tubman not only guided herself and her family to freedom 
through the underground railroad, she also made more than 19 trips to 
the South to lead more than 300 slaves to freedom. She never lost a 
``passenger'' along the route.
  The abolitionist leader Frederick Douglass was born in Talbot County 
on Maryland's eastern shore. At age 20 he escaped from slavery and 
spent the rest of his life advocating racial equality throughout the 
United States and the United Kingdom. Harriet Tubman, Frederick 
Douglass, and countless others who led slaves to freedom and fought to 
abolish slavery are the heroes who inspire us to persevere in the fight 
for equality and justice in this country and worldwide.
  In 1865, June 19 marked the end of slavery in America, but not the 
end of de jure racial discrimination. My own State of Maryland passed 
15 Jim Crow laws between 1870 and 1957. Maryland's schools, swimming 
pools, movie houses and other facilities were segregated. Notably, in 
1930, the University of Maryland Law School denied admission to 
Baltimore native Thurgood Marshall, a man who would two decades later 
argue the landmark Brown v. Board of Education case, outlawing legally 
segregated schools, and who would soon after become the Nation's first 
Black Supreme Court Justice.
  While our Nation has made considerable progress over the past century 
and a half, many challenges remain. Discrimination, disparities, and 
racially motivated hate persist. We must confront these issues. We 
cannot ignore the disparities in health care that result in higher 
premature birth rates and reduced life expectancy for minority 
populations. We cannot ignore discriminatory sentencing in our courts 
or discriminatory lending practices by financial institutions. Racially 
motivated police brutality and hate crimes cannot stand. We must 
continue to pursue justice in each of these areas, and for all 
Americans.
  We owe it to the legacy of our predecessors in the battle for racial 
equality to keep fighting injustice until the Declaration that ``all 
men are created equal'' rings true. We cannot be complacent. As Martin 
Luther King, Jr. said, ``We will remember not the words of our enemies, 
but the silence of our friends.''
  We must continue to strive toward elimination of inequality so we can 
truly honor the spirit of Juneteenth.

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