[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 149 (2003), Part 11]
[Senate]
[Page 15490]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




                         JUNETEENTH OBSERVANCE

  Mr. FRIST. Madam President, I will comment very briefly on two 
issues, the first is on the Juneteenth observance.
  Madam President, Juneteenth, which is also known as Freedom Day, is 
the date on which 250,000 slaves living in Texas finally learned of 
their emancipation. And that occurred nearly 3 years after President 
Lincoln's historic Emancipation Proclamation.
  It was in 1865, on June 19, that Union General Gordon Granger led 
2,000 troops into Galveston, TX, with news that the war had ended and 
that slavery had been abolished. He told the people of Texas:

       [T]hat in accordance with a Proclamation from the Executive 
     of the United States, all slaves are free. This 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 celebrations that followed began a 140-year tradition. Today, all 
across the country, Americans of all races will celebrate with prayer, 
and picnics, food, family, and friends.
  We join them, here on the Senate floor, to celebrate the struggle for 
freedom and to honor the profound contributions of African Americans to 
our Nation's culture and history.

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