June 19th commemorates the ending of slavery in our country.
Lincoln’s Emancipation Proclamation went into effect on January 1, 1963, stating that “All persons held as slaves within any state or designated part of a state…shall be then, and henceforth, and forever free.” It wasn’t until two and a half years later, June 19, 1865, when the Civil War ended, that people were actually freed.
Here we are 157 years later and the necessity to demand the rights that everyone should be afforded continues.
I, as a white woman, have never been judged by the color of my skin nor have I needed to take a stand to protect my rights. Today, I stand with my friends of color saying enough is enough.
“Let freedom ring.” Martin Luther King
Carol Marchant Gibbs
Stories Changing Lives