Florida Emancipation Day message from Mayor Ward
Press release from the City of Gainesville
GAINESVILLE, Fla. – Today, Gainesville Mayor Harvey Ward released the following message in honor of Florida Emancipation Day:
On May 20, 1865, Union General Edward McCook stood on the steps of the Knott House in Tallahassee and read the Emancipation Proclamation. More than two years had passed since President Abraham Lincoln declared all enslaved people in Confederate-held territory were to be set free. But as the Civil War ended, history shows there were 13 states with people still held in slavery.
On May 20, the approximately 61,000 enslaved people in our state finally were emancipated.
Florida Emancipation Day is more than a moment in time. It marks lives that were forever changed and generations that rose to face a new future with courage and hope. It allows us to remember and celebrate a shared history that continues to shape who we are as a community, state and nation.
We honor this legacy by telling the full story of Florida’s emancipation. As your mayor, I remain committed to a Gainesville where opportunity is real for everyone and where our story is told with honesty and care.
As Frederick Douglass once wrote, “I long to be able to report all chains broken…. and to tell you that the work is done.”
— Mayor Harvey L. Ward
Zzzzzzzzz
The end of slavery and the freedom of slaves are truly things to be celebrated, but why do you end it with the implication that black people are still in chains? Where are the chains? (And if anyone else wants to answer that, please be specific. Individual interactions with bad people are not chains; they happen because some people are simply bad people. And disparities alone are not evidence for discrimination: Where are the actual written laws that prevent black people from succeeding?)
If the Left wants conservatives to celebrate the end of slavery, they need to celebrate the end of slavery without implying that people are still in chains. When it’s an actual celebration instead of an exercise in white guilt, we will be happy to join them.
Saying that people are in chains and still slaves is an exercise of wanting people to feel white guilt and pass reparations. Same song and dance about idiots wanting something for nothing. And Florida was a Spanish slave and British slave terrority way before the US had a hand in it.
Dude, your leader set up a $1.8 nillion fund for reparations for the Jan 6 rioters and you defended doing nothing about it. Imagine if those Jan 6 rioters were black and what jail they’d be in now for decades.
Ward is by no means a Conservative. It’s Liberal Democrats that keep wanting to keep people down.
Ok Ward, let everyone locked up on 39th have a 3 day leave to celebrate at your house… let’s get this party 🎉 started !🤣🎶
The chains they’re in are those they’ve shackled themselves to and the financial straps placed upon them by locally implemented taxes and assessments.
Hannah, Jim Crow was only made illegal – if not completewly ended – 60 years ago. Prior to that – and after “emancipation” – blacks were virtually enslaved until well into the 20th century through the practice of arrests on weak charges and then prisoners rented out to factories, mines, and farms. Reconstruction abruptly ended as soon as the political establishment in the defeated south regained the upper hand and the promises of freedom squelched, along with education and voting.
Presently we have the Jim Crow south ending voting rights for blacks based on our illegitimate SC’s ruling. There will be very few to zero black congressional representatives across the entire south, a shameful overturning of the civil rights movement of 60 years ago.
Given that education and generational wealth accumulation were hampered for blacks, it is dreaming to think the problems developed over 300 years of slavery and persecution will end in 60 imperfect ones.
As to the left “wanting” conservatives to celebrate the end of slavery – really? You need encouragement to celebrtae the end of slavery? WTF! I guess “conservative” doesn’t mean what I thought it did.
Thanks for confirming that nobody is in chains.
Yeah, no chains no foul. That’s your test?
The chains of slavery have been broken long ago…..but they just can’t even try to make it on their own by working for a living. They don’t want a hand up especially when they’re giving us the middle finger while living a life of criminal and drug addiction. Enough of this nonsense.
Quote by Bill Belichick (about Past)
To live in the past is to die in the present.
We need to move forward.
‘As your mayor, I remain committed to a Gainesville where opportunity is real for everyone…’ Harvey ‘Two Face’ Ward once again steps up to show the world what a liar he is.
It’s a statement celebrating the emancipation of blacks from slavery in 1865 and these right wing clowns here take it as just another excuse to post racist BS and express the same old pet and petty grievances.