-Juneteenth to me means
progression, transition.
-Juneteenth, a cross between
June and 19
commemorates the official end
of slavery in Texas
on June 19, 1865.
That's over two years
after the Emancipation
Proclamation was signed into law
by President Lincoln.
News of their new freedoms
was slow to reach some slaves
throughout the country,
and historians theorize
that Texan slave owners
suppressed the information
in order to get one final
cotton harvest from the slaves.
On June 19, 1865,
Major General Gordan Granger
and Union troops
arrived in Galveston
to announce the war had ended,
and delivered General Order No.
3, which proclaimed
that all slaves were free.
The first official
Juneteenth celebration
took place in Texas
a year later
and became
a state holiday in 1980.
Juneteenth in celebrated
in many ways,
ranging from parades to cookouts
and other activities.
But Juneteenth isn't just
about celebrations.
It also serves as a time
to further the conversations
on the legacy left
by slavery in the United States.
And as a means of discussing
ways to address it,
like the hotly contested
topic of reparations.
-We recognize our lineage
as a generational trust,
as inheritance.
And the real dilemma posed
by reparations is just that,
a dilemma on inheritance.
It is impossible
to imagine America
without the inheritance
of slavery.
-First sponsored by John Conyers
in 1989
and reintroduced every session
until his retirement in 2017,
the Commission to Study
and Develop Reparation Proposals
for African Americans Act
tried to tackle the subject.
The bill is now sponsored
by Texas Democrat
Sheila Jackson Lee,
in the House,
and Senator Cory Booker,
in the Senate.
-Though I am gratified
that we are having this hearing
on Juneteenth,
for those of us
who understand Juneteenth,
two years after
the Proclamation --
Emancipation Proclamation,
there were those Africans
who did not have freedom
until 1865.
HR 40 is in fact,
is in fact the response
of the Untied States of America,
long overdue.
Slavery is original sin.
Slavery has never received
an apology.
