Juneteenth National Independence Day Act

Floor Speech

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Ms. LEE of California. Madam Speaker, I thank the gentlewoman for yielding.

Madam Speaker, I thank Congresswoman Sheila Jackson for her persistent and consistent leadership on so many issues, especially getting this bill to the floor today.

As another daughter of Texas, I am deeply connected to the history of Juneteenth. My grandfather, William Calhoun Parish, who helped raise me, was born in Galveston, Texas, just 10 years after General Granger announced that enslaved Africans were freed from the brutal and barbaric legal institution of slavery. My ancestors--my great- grandmother--were enslaved in and around Galveston, Texas.

Like myself, so many in the African-American community have celebrated Juneteenth as our liberation day. To us, it represents the day that enslaved African Americans were recognized as free men, women, and children.

Yet, the end of slavery did not stop with the brutal treatment of African Americans in the United States. The persistence of racial disparities in housing, income, education, the wealth gap, and other areas of injustices African Americans really are experiencing today are a direct result of the racism embedded in our institutions from our founding.

So, it is not purely symbolic to make Juneteenth a holiday. It is an important step toward the country reckoning the truth of its legacy of slavery in the past as manifested today.

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Ms. LEE of California. It is manifested in the racial injustices which all of us must work together to end. So, yes, it is so important that we have the truth told of this legacy of slavery so that we can move forward and work together to end these racial injustices.

I am reminded of Dr. Maya Angelou and what she once wrote. She said, ``I am the dream and the hope of the slave. I rise,'' in ``Still I Rise.''

Madam Speaker, I want to thank you today for bringing this forward, and I thank the chairwoman for yielding.

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