Houston Chronicle By Ben Carson June 18, 2019
It was more than 150 years ago when President Abraham Lincoln issued his landmark Emancipation Proclamation declaring that “all persons held as slaves†shall be free. Limited in its reach, it took years before those words took root throughout our nation, putting an end to slavery’s stain on our nation’s soul.
In the great state of Texas, this national turning point is recognized today as Juneteenth. I imagine the reaction of those free and enslaved Texans in Galveston on June 19, 1865, when Union Gen. Gordon Granger declared, “All slaves are free.â€
Today I will experience something profound. I am visiting the National Archives in Washington to read that faded parchment, five pages of handwritten text that marked the beginning of the end of involuntary servitude in the United States.
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