Our presidents and I will be writing more before the end of the month. There is much to tell you about the plans we've been discussing with many of you about how we expect to safely resume on-campus operations and return to our classrooms, labs, and residence halls this fall.
But first, I wrote to you last on June 5 about the
Imperative for Change. In reaffirming our condemnation of racial injustice and violence against Black Americans, I also stated our commitment to examining, confronting, and ending inequality and the vestiges of racism rooted in the horrible evil of American enslavement of Black Americans. While we will be very deliberate in finding ways to do this in our UMS communities, I hope this is a commitment that every American will make. We cannot lose the impact of the moment. Far too many before George Floyd died in vain. Far too many inflection points before this died quietly from lack of resolve among all of us to finally change.
I'm writing, therefore, to demonstrate the commitment I stated in my June 5 message -- that ending racism requires work
every day.
My work today is about rooting out ignorance. I write to call attention to a celebration about which far too many outside of our Black communities are ignorant: Juneteenth. Today, we celebrate Freedom Day, commemorating the end of slavery, the day in 1865 when more than 250,000 enslaved Black Americans in Texas learned, finally, of the freedom granted to them two-and-a-half years earlier by the Emancipation Proclamation.
Today is a day that has deserved much wider celebration far earlier than now. As President Ferrini-Mundy noted in her university message yesterday, in 2011 Maine became the 38th state to call for
official recognition of Juneteenth, now done by an annual proclamation from Maine's Governor. I invite you to read Governor Mills's simple but powerful
statement for Juneteenth 2020. Before that, it was only as recent as 2006 that the United States Senate called for recognition of Juneteenth as "historically significant," noting further, in a
resolution introduced by then-Senator Barack Obama, that its "history should be regarded as a means for understanding the past and solving the challenges of the future."
We will do our own work to understand that history and solve today's problems. To that end, I call your attention to a public forum addressing racial injustice that the University of Maine School of Law will present at noon today. The Juneteenth Forum, which will be conducted via Zoom, is entitled
Racial Injustice: Reimagining Policing and Public Safety.
The forum is free and open to the public, but registration is required.
To register, please visit:
I close with a historical footnote.
January 1, 1863 was to be the day President Lincoln signed the Emancipation Proclamation. But before he did so, he presided over the annual White House New Year's reception, where he stood shaking hands with well-wishers for several hours. When he returned to his study where the Proclamation awaited his signature, his hand was shaky and unsteady when he grasped the pen. Attuned to the historic significance of what he was about to do, he put the pen down for a few moments and observed, "If my name ever goes into history it will be for this act, and my whole soul is in it. If my hand trembles when I sign the Proclamation, all who examine the document hereafter will say, 'He hesitated.'" Then he
slowly and firmly wrote "Abraham Lincoln," looked up, smiled, and said, "That will do."
I hope you'll join me in working every day to root out racism. I hope, like I will, you'll put your whole soul in it.
