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African American Civil War Memorial & Museum Commemorates U.S.C.T. Freedom Fighters Founders Day
May 22 @ 10:00 am - 12:00 pm EDT
AFRICAN AMERICAN CIVIL WAR
MEMORIAL & MUSEUM
Commemorates
U.S.C.T. FREEDOM FIGHTERS FOUNDERS DAY
Presented by
FREED: Female RE–Enactors of Distinction
S&DUSCT: Sons and Daughters United States Colored Troops
May 22, 1863, the United States Government established within the Adjutant General’s Office, Department of War, a Bureau of Colored Troops. Founders Day is dedicated to all people who carry the fight for freedom into the New Millennium.”
SATURDAY, MAY 22, 2021
Wreath Laying Ceremony
At the “Spirit of Freedom” Memorial
10:00 AM
10th & U Street, N.W.,
Washington, D.C. 20001
(202) 667-2667
Commemorating The Civil War Enforcement Clause that Saved the Union.
by Asa Gordon- Sec.Gen.S&DUSCT
The post Civil War Constitutional (13,14 & 15) Amendments constitute the second founding of the United States of America. All of the Reconstruction Amendments included a closing enforcement clause that enabled Congress to enforce the provisions of those amendments by “appropriate legislation, ” i.e. “Congress shall have power to enforce this article by appropriate legislation.”
During the Civil War, Abraham Lincoln acknowledged that without the labor and fighting power of blacks “We can not longer maintain the contest … We would be compelled to abandon the war.” Lincoln determined to issue an Emancipation Proclamation with an enforcement clause; “And I further declare and make known, that such persons of suitable condition, will be received into the armed service of the United States” as “warranted by the Constitution, upon military necessity.”
The Civil War Memorial & Museum annually celebrates U.S.C.T. Freedom Fighters Founders Day. Founders day commemorates the War Department Adjutant General’s Office General Order #143 issued on May 22, 1863 that effected the enforcement clause of the Emancipation Proclamation by the establishment of a Bureau of Colored Troops. This war measure enforcement clause to save the union, was a necessary precursor to the reconstruction constitutional enforcement clauses to inaugurate a “new birth of freedom.”
W.E.B. Du Bois, in Black Reconstruction in America, (1935) under the heading The Propaganda of History noted “How the facts of American history have in the last half century been falsified because the nation was ashamed. The South was ashamed because it fought to perpetuate human slavery. The North was ashamed because it had to call in the black men to save the Union, abolish slavery and establish democracy.”
We honor the realization of the Emancipation’s enforcement clause that saved the Union by drawing attention to the 209,145 names that are engraved on The Spirit of Freedom Wall of Honor AACW Memorial. The museum will be honoring the Reconstruction’s “new birth of freedom” constitution enforcement clauses to “establish democracy” in a new exhibit coming soon: FROM BULLETS TO BALLOTS: the voting rights legacy of the U.S. Colored Troops.
Founders Day is dedicated to all people who carry the fight for freedom into the new Millennium.
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