Today is Juneteenth, anniversary of the day in 1865 when news of the Emancipation Proclamation issued by President Abraham Lincoln, and effective 1 January 1863, was finally delivered in Galveston, Texas. Major General Gordon Granger issued the General Order Number 3:



The people of Texas are informed that in accordance with a Proclamation from the Executive of the United States, all slaves are free. This involves an absolute equality of rights and rights of property between former masters and slaves, and the connection heretofore existing between them becomes that between employer and free laborer.



Celebrations of the day have through the years been closely associated with the Christian church, and here is a traditional prayer from the period of enslavement, beginning Father, I stretch my hand to thee--for no other help I know. Oh my rose of Sharon, my shelter in the time of storm. My prince of peace, my hope in this harsh land...



I'm looking forward to the memorial service this evening at Mother Bethel A.M.E. Church in Philadelphia, the church that W.E.B. DuBois called by long odds the vastest and most remarkable product of American Negro civilization. The church was founded by Richard Allen, among the most distinguished sons of Philadelphia, and its property at Sixth and Lombard Streets is the oldest parcel of land in the United States continuously owned by African-Americans.



Also on this date, and twenty years later in 1885, the Statue of Liberty arrived in New York Harbor.



Lift Every Voice And Sing



Lift every voice and sing, till earth and heaven ring,

Ring with the harmonies of liberty;

Let our rejoicing rise, high as the listening skies,

Let it resound loud as the rolling sea.

Sing a song full of the faith that the dark past has taught us,

Sing a song full of the hope that the present has brought us;

Facing the rising sun of our new day begun,

Let us march on till victory is won.



Stony the road we trod, bitter the chastening rod,

Felt in the days when hope unborn had died;

Yet with a steady beat, have not our weary feet,

Come to the place for which our fathers sighed?

We have come over a way that with tears has been watered,

We have come, treading our path through the blood of the slaughtered;

Out from the gloomy past, till now we stand at last

Where the white gleam of our bright star is cast.



God of our weary years, God of our silent tears,

Thou Who hast brought us thus far on the way;

Thou Who hast by Thy might, led us into the light,

Keep us forever in the path, we pray.

Lest our feet stray from the places, our God, where we met Thee.

Lest our hearts, drunk with the wine of the world, we forget Thee.

Shadowed beneath Thy hand, may we forever stand,

True to our God, true to our native land.