Juneteenth National Independence Day Act

Floor Speech

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Mr. CLYBURN. Madam Speaker, I thank the gentlewoman for yielding me this time. I do have some prepared remarks here, but don't tell my staff that I'm not going to use them.

I want to speak just a little bit about what I just heard and what I think some of our challenges are in this great country of ours. And it is a great country. It does not need to be made great again. Our problem is making this greatness accessible and affordable for all of its citizens.

I think one of the ways that we do that is to recognize that we have a shared history in this country, but it is a history that is spotted with a lot of inequities, inequalities, and a lot of things that we ought to be about the business of working to try and level off the so- called playing field. One of those, I think, is really about the ability to communicate.

When we talk about Juneteenth, I often equate the history of Juneteenth with our country's inability to communicate, because the Emancipation Proclamation, signed by Abraham Lincoln in 1862, was to be effective January 1, 1863, freeing all the slaves in the Confederate States not under Union control.

Now, when that happened, there was a big meeting down on the banks of a river in Beaufort County, South Carolina, near Port Royal, and 4,000 slaves came to listen to General Saxton read the Emancipation Proclamation. On that day they were free.

However, it was June 19, 1865, 2\1/2\ years later before it was communicated to those who were enslaved in Texas. The failure to communicate kept them in slavery for another 2\1/2\ years.

The failure to communicate is what seemed to keep us from coming together as one people today.

If we learned the lessons of history, as George Santayana once said to us: When we learn the lessons of history, we are bound to repeat them if we don't.

So I would hope that as we turn this piece of legislation into law and create a national holiday for Juneteenth, I hope we will keep a couple things in mind. It is not lost on me that this building we all meet in was built by slaves.

And one of the little known facts was a man named Philip Reid, who was enslaved in Charleston, South Carolina, and who came, after being bought, to Washington, D.C., worked in the foundry. And when the foundry made the Statue of Freedom, they couldn't get it up on top of the building.

All of those learned people who had been free all of their lives could not figure out how to get that statue on top of this building.

Philip Reid, enslaved, figured it out, and he showed them how to get that statue on top of this building. He was able to communicate some lessons that he could teach, though he was unlearned. In fact, it was against the law to be able to teach him to read. His name was Reid, spelled a little differently.

Now, I would hope that we would pass this law. I suspect we won't do what the Senate did and do it unanimously, though I think it would be a tremendous demonstration of unity for every one of us who vote to pass this law recognizing June 19 as a national holiday.

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