Juneteenth
Floor Speech
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Mr. DURBIN. Mr. President, this coming Monday is Juneteenth, our newest national holiday, a day set aside to celebrate the triumph of freedom over slavery in America.
The name ``Juneteenth'' is a combination of two words, ``June nineteenth.'' That was the day, in 1865, that the U.S. Army's ``General Order No. 3'' was issued, finally informing the people of Texas of the Emancipation Proclamation--and that all of the remaining enslaved people in that State were free.
Sadly, on this Juneteenth--even as our Nation celebrates--we are witnessing the most concerted effort in decades to erase from our history America's long and still unfinished struggle to fully end racism, the odious lie on which slavery was built. Last year, according to the American Library Association, there were 1,269 demands to ban books in school libraries in various States. That is more than double the number of book bans sought in 2021. And it is the greatest number of book bans demanded in the 20 years that PEN America, an organization dedicated to the freedom of expression, has kept records on this troubling trend.
What is the most frequent target of these new bans? Books involving, or even just mentioning, issues of race. And what are the books that these censors are demanding be pulled from the shelves of school libraries?
Here are some examples: ``To Kill a Mockingbird'' is one. Another is a biography of Jesse Owens, the great American runner who won four gold medals at the Olympic Games in Munich in 1936, shattering the Nazi myth of racial supremacy. In Florida, the book banners demanded that school textbooks containing the story of Rosa Parks remove race and racism as reasons she refused to move to the back of the bus. Such efforts to erase history are an attack on the freedom to read and learn.
This week, my State of Illinois became the first State in the Nation to ban this form of censorship by public libraries. I hope more States will stand up for history--and that on the eve of this Juneteenth, Americans will commit ourselves firmly to truth.
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