[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 156 (2010), Part 8] [Senate] [Pages 11081-11082] [From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]JUNETEENTH Mr. CARDIN. Mr. President, I rise today in celebration of the 145th anniversary of Juneteenth, the oldest commemoration of the end of slavery in the United States. On June 19, 1865, Union soldiers arrived in Galveston, TX, to inform the slaves that they were free. Although the Emancipation Proclamation took effect on January 1, 1863, it was 2 years later before the message reached slaves in Texas and the Union troops enforced the President's order. Eighty-nine years after America's Independence Day, Africans in America finally obtained their independence from slavery. Juneteenth is a day when all Americans should celebrate Black Americans' freedom and heritage. In 2008, Congress apologized for the injustice, cruelty, brutality, and inhumanity of slavery and Jim Crow laws. The congressional resolution acknowledged that African Americans continue to suffer from the complex interplay between slavery and Jim Crow long after both systems were formally abolished. This suffering is both tangible and intangible, including the loss of human dignity, the frustration of careers and professional lives, and the long-term loss of income and opportunity. On Wednesday, Congress honored the African-American slaves who built the U.S. Capitol by dedicating plaques to their memory. Historians have discovered that slaves worked 12-hour days, 6 days a week on the construction of the Capitol. The Federal Government rented over 400 slaves from local slave owners at a rate of $5 per person per month, but the slaves were not paid for their work. On this day, it is fitting to remember our Nation's painful history. Millions of Africans were torn from their homeland and brought to the Americas as chattel. While it is unknown how many died during the middle passage, it is estimated that 645,000 arrived in the United States. My own State of Maryland had slaves. In 1790, more than 100,000 slaves, which would have been about a third of the State's total population, lived in Maryland. Seventy years later, the 1860 census indicated that there were more than 4 million slaves nationwide. Despite Maryland's history of slavery, many Marylanders led the fight for abolition. The underground railroad was a secret network that helped enslaved men, women, and children escape to freedom. Its route through Maryland took passengers by boat up the Chesapeake Bay. Ships departed from the many towns located directly on the bay and from cities on rivers that flowed into the bay, including Baltimore. Many ships' pilots hid fugitives and helped them on their way. Another route led slaves by land up along the eastern shore of Maryland and into Delaware, where they could cross into Pennsylvania and go north to freedom in Massachusetts, New York, and Canada. This was the route used by Harriet Ross Tubman, a native of Dorchester County, MD. Tubman not only guided herself and her family to freedom through the underground railroad, she also made more than 19 trips to the South to lead more than 300 slaves to freedom. She never lost a ``passenger'' along the route. The abolitionist leader Frederick Douglass was born in Talbot County on [[Page 11082]] Maryland's eastern shore. At age 20 he escaped from slavery and spent the rest of his life advocating racial equality throughout the United States and the United Kingdom. Harriet Tubman, Frederick Douglass, and countless others who led slaves to freedom and fought to abolish slavery are the heroes who inspire us to persevere in the fight for equality and justice in this country and worldwide. In 1865, June 19 marked the end of slavery in America, but not the end of de jure racial discrimination. My own State of Maryland passed 15 Jim Crow laws between 1870 and 1957. Maryland's schools, swimming pools, movie houses and other facilities were segregated. Notably, in 1930, the University of Maryland Law School denied admission to Baltimore native Thurgood Marshall, a man who would two decades later argue the landmark Brown v. Board of Education case, outlawing legally segregated schools, and who would soon after become the Nation's first Black Supreme Court Justice. While our Nation has made considerable progress over the past century and a half, many challenges remain. Discrimination, disparities, and racially motivated hate persist. We must confront these issues. We cannot ignore the disparities in health care that result in higher premature birth rates and reduced life expectancy for minority populations. We cannot ignore discriminatory sentencing in our courts or discriminatory lending practices by financial institutions. Racially motivated police brutality and hate crimes cannot stand. We must continue to pursue justice in each of these areas, and for all Americans. We owe it to the legacy of our predecessors in the battle for racial equality to keep fighting injustice until the Declaration that ``all men are created equal'' rings true. We cannot be complacent. As Martin Luther King, Jr. said, ``We will remember not the words of our enemies, but the silence of our friends.'' We must continue to strive toward elimination of inequality so we can truly honor the spirit of Juneteenth. ____________________