Gwen Moore: “I thank the gentlewoman for yielding to me and for inviting me. Madam Speaker, I rise tonight to join my CBC colleagues…”

“I thank the gentlewoman for yielding to me and for inviting me. Madam Speaker, I rise tonight to join my CBC colleagues in highlighting the importance of honoring the holiday and continuing the legacy of Juneteenth Day, the first one celebrated on June 19, 1865. As you have heard, this is the date on which Union Major General Gordon Granger arrived in Galveston, Texas, to announce the end of both the Civil War and the inhumane system of legalized enslavement of Africans in the United States of America. Now, it must be noted that this announcement came 2\1/2\ years after President Abraham Lincoln issued an executive order that most of us know as the Emancipation Proclamation. But it is an important reminder that our efforts to form a more perfect Union don't really have any timeframe or any date, but they are ever ongoing. Madam Speaker, I want you to know that in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, from which I hail, we are going to be celebrating Juneteenth Day, and it will be the 50th anniversary of Juneteenth Day. Yes, in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, up north, we started observing this holiday in 1971. It is a long way from Galveston, Texas, making it one of the first Northern States to commemorate the end of slavery in our country.…”