Emancipation Day

Floor Speech

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Ms. PLASKETT. Mr. Speaker, as Americans celebrate this Independence Day, July Fourth, the day the Founders declared their intention to be free from England, the day before in the Virgin Islands, July 3, we celebrate one of the most historic and spectacular days for those of us who have ancestral ties or call the Virgin Islands our home.

It is the commemoration of our emancipation because on that day, July 3, 1848, the Virgin Islands became one of only two places in the Western Hemisphere for individuals to gain their freedom from enslavement by organized violent overthrow.

On that day in 1848, after months of organization and planning, thousands of enslaved people, including my ancestors, left plantations throughout the island of St. Croix and converged at Fort Frederik in what was the Danish West Indies and demanded their freedom.

Unfortunately, while the Governor of the time, Peter Von Scholten, declared all formerly enslaved in the Danish West Indies free, we now know that freedom is not easily free, and a declaration without full rights and privileges is a hollow declaration.

Even today, anyone who decides to live in the Virgin Islands must give up a portion of their freedom: the right to vote for President, the right to have full voting representation in both Chambers of this body, and the right to receive SSI. The list goes on and on.

How often when asking for equal treatment, even tax law, I have to remind people that we are not foreign. We are, in fact, a possession of the United States, drafted into wars, loving this country with no path to full inclusion. Imagine if Wyoming or Iowa or Vermont were indefinitely to remain territories with no path to full citizenship.

In the 116th and 117th Congress, language was added into H.R. 1 which created a Congressional Task Force to not only create a recommendation to a pathway for greater inclusion for the territories and voting participation in this body but also to examine what has been the cost to the people economically, socially, politically, for hundreds of years not having those rights, including Puerto Rico, Guam, American Samoa, and the Northern Mariana Islands.

I will be introducing this legislation this term, and I ask my colleagues to join.

Mr. Speaker, let me say to my fellow Virgin Islanders: We, as well, have work to do in our own freedom. As the prayer and chant says, ``We must free our minds from mental slavery,'' the chains that bound us in a psychological and cultural legacy that persist long after the physical chains are broken. Liberation involves more than legal freedom. We Virgin Islanders have had our legal freedom for almost two centuries, and yet we still struggle with violent crime against one another, crumbling sociopolitical infrastructure, and blaming others for the state of our community instead of assigning ourselves work to make it better.

True emancipation and liberation require breaking free from internalized oppression, self-limiting beliefs, and our own social systems that continue to marginalize ourselves and our children.

Our ancestors made the brave, bold decision to take a history of bloodshed, pain, and inhumanity--a history of being stolen and trafficked from Africa to the West, and exposed to some of the most inhumane and grueling conditions--and transformed it into achievement of their freedom.

The environment of self-hatred and hatred of others that persists on our islands must stop. That is not the sacrifices our ancestors made. Our ancestors could not have accomplished the incredible feat of defeating the Danish Army with every odd stacked against them without being unified. Unity and love are inseparable.

Let this Emancipation Day serve as both a commemoration and a call to action for us to honor our ancestors who resisted and survived as we do the work of full liberation. Let this day remind us that freedom is both a historical achievement and an ongoing process of our individual and collective self-determination, progress, and development.

Blessed Emancipation Day.

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