Emancipation Day Resolution

Floor Speech

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Ms. PLASKETT. Madam Speaker, today, I rise to honor my ancestors as we approach the 175th anniversary of our emancipation--the self- emancipation of the enslaved people of the Danish West Indies.

It is ironic that now in the United States, right now, there is a war being raged to censor and erase history and heritage, not just of Virgin Islanders but for Black and Brown people in this Nation.

The bloody insurrection of American revolutionaries to attain their freedom is celebrated, yet the history of resilience and strength, the story of the African Diaspora in this country, is attempted to be taken away.

Shackled and bound, over 120,000 of my ancestors, men, women, and children, were stolen and trafficked from the shores of Africa to the islands of St. Croix, St. Thomas, and St. John in the Danish West Indies, now known as the Virgin Islands of the United States.

From the early 1650s until 1848, the Danish subjected the people of the Virgin Islands to the atrocities of chattel slavery. Forgotten today, the Danes were notorious for having some of the most grueling and inhumane conditions in the Caribbean. Under these conditions and the watchful eye of the Danish, the people resolved to mobilize and seize their freedom.

On July 3, 1848, 9,000 enslaved and freed people on the island of St. Croix collected en masse at Fort Frederik and demanded their immediate and indefinite liberation. Under the superior leadership of Moses ``General Buddhoe'' Gottlieb, they had coordinated, strategized, and executed a plan for freedom.

Overcome by the people, the Danish surrendered by the declaration of the Danish governor.

The Virgin Islands became one of only two places to ever successfully gain their freedom through an organized slave revolt, armed insurrection, in the history of the Western Hemisphere. They would wait for no man to unshackle their chains.

This is what it means to be a Virgin Islander, to overcome the most harrowing of circumstances, to reclaim the power that which is kept seemingly out of reach, and to wait for no one to give us freedom, equity, or prosperity.

Malcolm X at the founding rally of the Organization of Afro-American Unity stated: ``A race of people is like an individual man; until it uses its own talents, takes pride in its own history, expresses its own culture, affirms its own selfhood, it can never fulfill itself.''

We, the people of the Virgin Islands, must not sit idle expecting that the same system that oppressed our ancestors, that continues to deny us rights, will solve the very problems of its creation. We don't need to look for others to solve our problems. We have within ourselves, within our own diaspora, all the answers to heal ourselves and grow.

Throughout the Virgin Islands and the United States and beyond, we are doctors, engineers, writers, educators, builders, economists, organizers. We are a people of immeasurable talent, borne from a history of strength and resilience, possessing a rich and vibrant culture capable of good things, all of which are squandered if we continue to allow our mental slavery to bind our true freedom.

We may have the scars of countless injustices, but Virgin Islanders also have the blood of our ancestors that organized and were willing to give up all for freedom of self-definition and their own determination of their lives.

Mr. Speaker, 175 years ago, our ancestors abandoned their sense of ``I'' and adopted ``we.'' Through ingenuity, bravery, and unity, they rejected the brutal reality forced upon them and reclaimed the power to manifest a present and future of their will and their creation.

We are the heroes of our own story. This is from which we are born. It is in our blood to rise.

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