[Congressional Record Volume 171, Number 110 (Thursday, June 26, 2025)]
[House]
[Page H2976]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                            EMANCIPATION DAY

  (Ms. Plaskett of the Virgin Islands was recognized to address the 
House for 5 minutes.)
  Ms. PLASKETT. Mr. Speaker, as Americans celebrate this Independence 
Day, July Fourth, the day the Founders declared their intention to be 
free from England, the day before in the Virgin Islands, July 3, we 
celebrate one of the most historic and spectacular days for those of us 
who have ancestral ties or call the Virgin Islands our home.
  It is the commemoration of our emancipation because on that day, July 
3, 1848, the Virgin Islands became one of only two places in the 
Western Hemisphere for individuals to gain their freedom from 
enslavement by organized violent overthrow.
  On that day in 1848, after months of organization and planning, 
thousands of enslaved people, including my ancestors, left plantations 
throughout the island of St. Croix and converged at Fort Frederik in 
what was the Danish West Indies and demanded their freedom.
  Unfortunately, while the Governor of the time, Peter Von Scholten, 
declared all formerly enslaved in the Danish West Indies free, we now 
know that freedom is not easily free, and a declaration without full 
rights and privileges is a hollow declaration.
  Even today, anyone who decides to live in the Virgin Islands must 
give up a portion of their freedom: the right to vote for President, 
the right to have full voting representation in both Chambers of this 
body, and the right to receive SSI. The list goes on and on.
  How often when asking for equal treatment, even tax law, I have to 
remind people that we are not foreign. We are, in fact, a possession of 
the United States, drafted into wars, loving this country with no path 
to full inclusion. Imagine if Wyoming or Iowa or Vermont were 
indefinitely to remain territories with no path to full citizenship.
  In the 116th and 117th Congress, language was added into H.R. 1 which 
created a Congressional Task Force to not only create a recommendation 
to a pathway for greater inclusion for the territories and voting 
participation in this body but also to examine what has been the cost 
to the people economically, socially, politically, for hundreds of 
years not having those rights, including Puerto Rico, Guam, American 
Samoa, and the Northern Mariana Islands.
  I will be introducing this legislation this term, and I ask my 
colleagues to join.

                              {time}  1030

  Mr. Speaker, let me say to my fellow Virgin Islanders: We, as well, 
have work to do in our own freedom. As the prayer and chant says, ``We 
must free our minds from mental slavery,'' the chains that bound us in 
a psychological and cultural legacy that persist long after the 
physical chains are broken. Liberation involves more than legal 
freedom. We Virgin Islanders have had our legal freedom for almost two 
centuries, and yet we still struggle with violent crime against one 
another, crumbling sociopolitical infrastructure, and blaming others 
for the state of our community instead of assigning ourselves work to 
make it better.
  True emancipation and liberation require breaking free from 
internalized oppression, self-limiting beliefs, and our own social 
systems that continue to marginalize ourselves and our children.
  Our ancestors made the brave, bold decision to take a history of 
bloodshed, pain, and inhumanity--a history of being stolen and 
trafficked from Africa to the West, and exposed to some of the most 
inhumane and grueling conditions--and transformed it into achievement 
of their freedom.
  The environment of self-hatred and hatred of others that persists on 
our islands must stop. That is not the sacrifices our ancestors made. 
Our ancestors could not have accomplished the incredible feat of 
defeating the Danish Army with every odd stacked against them without 
being unified. Unity and love are inseparable.
  Let this Emancipation Day serve as both a commemoration and a call to 
action for us to honor our ancestors who resisted and survived as we do 
the work of full liberation. Let this day remind us that freedom is 
both a historical achievement and an ongoing process of our individual 
and collective self-determination, progress, and development.
  Blessed Emancipation Day.

                          ____________________