Editing Emancipation Proclamation (section)

==Legacy in the civil rights era==

===Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.===
[[File:President Barack Obama views the Emancipation Proclamation in the Oval Office 2010-01-18.jpg|thumb|President [[Barack Obama]] views the Emancipation Proclamation in the Oval Office hung above a bust of Martin Luther King Jr. in 2010]]

Dr. [[Martin Luther King Jr.]] made many references to the Emancipation Proclamation during the [[civil rights movement]]. These include an "Emancipation Proclamation Centennial Address" he gave in New York City on September 12, 1962, in which he placed the Proclamation alongside the Declaration of Independence as an "imperishable" contribution to civilization and added, "All tyrants, past, present and future, are powerless to bury the truths in these declarations...." He lamented that despite a history where the United States "proudly professed the basic principles inherent in both documents," it "sadly practiced the antithesis of these principles." He concluded, "There is but one way to commemorate the Emancipation Proclamation. That is to make its declarations of freedom real; to reach back to the origins of our nation when our message of equality electrified an unfree world, and reaffirm democracy by deeds as bold and daring as the issuance of the Emancipation Proclamation."<ref>{{cite web|url=http://www.nps.gov/anti/historyculture/mlk-ep.htm|title=Dr. Martin Luther King on the Emancipation Proclamation|publisher=National Park Service|author=Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.}}</ref>

King's most famous invocation of the Emancipation Proclamation was in a speech from the steps of the [[Lincoln Memorial]] at the 1963 [[March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom]] (often referred to as the "[[I Have a Dream]]" speech). King began the speech saying "Five score years ago, a great American, in whose symbolic shadow we stand, signed the Emancipation Proclamation. This momentous decree came as a great beacon light of hope to millions of Negro slaves who had been seared in the flames of withering injustice. It came as a joyous daybreak to end the long night of their captivity. But one hundred years later, we must face the tragic fact that the Negro still is not free. One hundred years later, the life of the Negro is still sadly crippled by the manacles of segregation and the chains of discrimination."<ref>{{cite web|url=http://www.thekingcenter.org/archive/document/i-have-dream|title=I Have A Dream|publisher=The King Center|date=August 28, 1963|author=Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. |access-date=August 29, 2013|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20140723170458/http://thekingcenter.org/archive/document/i-have-dream|archive-date=July 23, 2014|url-status=dead}}</ref>

====The "Second Emancipation Proclamation"====
{{Main|Second Emancipation Proclamation}}
In the early 1960s, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and his associates called on President [[John F. Kennedy]] to bypass Southern segregationist opposition in the Congress by issuing an [[executive order]] to put an end to segregation.<ref>[https://www.crmvet.org/info/emancip2.htm Draft of Second Emancipation Proclamation]</ref> This envisioned document was referred to as the "Second Emancipation Proclamation". Kennedy, however, did not issue a second Emancipation Proclamation "and noticeably avoided all centennial celebrations of emancipation." Historian [[David W. Blight]] points out that, although the idea of an executive order to act as a second Emancipation Proclamation "has been virtually forgotten," the manifesto that King and his associates produced calling for an executive order showed his "close reading of American politics" and recalled how moral leadership could have an effect on the American public through an executive order. Despite its failure "to spur a second Emancipation Proclamation from the White House, it was an important and emphatic attempt to combat the structured forgetting of emancipation latent within Civil War memory."<ref>Blight, David W. and Allison Scharfstein, "King's Forgotten Manifesto". ''The New York Times'', May 16, 2012.</ref>

===President John F. Kennedy===
On June 11, 1963, President Kennedy spoke on national television about civil rights. Kennedy, who had been routinely criticized as timid by some civil rights activists, reminded Americans that two black students had been peacefully enrolled in the [[University of Alabama]] with the aid of the [[Army National Guard|National Guard]], despite [[Stand in the Schoolhouse Door|the opposition of Governor George Wallace]].

John Kennedy called it a "moral issue."<ref name=Peniel/> Invoking the centennial of the Emancipation Proclamation he said,

{{blockquote|One hundred years of delay have passed since President Lincoln freed the slaves, yet their heirs, their grandsons, are not fully free. They are not yet freed from the bonds of injustice. They are not yet freed from social and economic oppression. And this Nation, for all its hopes and all its boasts, will not be fully free until all its citizens are free. We preach freedom around the world, and we mean it, and we cherish our freedom here at home, but are we to say to the world, and much more importantly, to each other that this is a land of the free except for the Negroes; that we have no second-class citizens except Negroes; that we have no class or caste system, no ghettoes, no master race except with respect to Negroes? Now the time has come for this Nation to fulfill its promise. The [[Birmingham campaign|events in Birmingham]] and elsewhere have so increased the cries for equality that no city or State or legislative body can prudently choose to ignore them.<ref>{{cite web |title=237 – Radio and Television Report to the American People on Civil Rights |date=June 11, 1963 |author=John F. Kennedy |url=http://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/ws/index.php?pid=9271&st=&st1=#}}</ref>}}

In the same speech, Kennedy announced he would introduce a comprehensive civil rights bill in the [[United States Congress]], which he did a week later. Kennedy pushed for its passage until he was assassinated on November 22, 1963. Historian [[Peniel E. Joseph]] holds Lyndon Johnson's ability to get that bill, the [[Civil Rights Act of 1964]], signed into law on July 2, 1964, to have been aided by "the moral forcefulness of the June 11 speech", which had turned "the narrative of civil rights from a regional issue into a national story promoting racial equality and democratic renewal."<ref name=Peniel>{{cite news |title=Kennedy's Finest Moment |author=Peniel E. Joseph | author-link=Peniel E. Joseph |date=June 10, 2013 |url=https://www.nytimes.com/2013/06/11/opinion/kennedys-civil-rights-triumph.html |archive-url=https://ghostarchive.org/archive/20220101/https://www.nytimes.com/2013/06/11/opinion/kennedys-civil-rights-triumph.html |archive-date=2022-01-01 |url-access=limited|newspaper=The New York Times}}{{cbignore}}</ref>

===President Lyndon B. Johnson===
During the [[civil rights movement]] of the 1960s, [[Lyndon B. Johnson]] invoked the Emancipation Proclamation, holding it up as a promise yet to be fully implemented.

As vice president, while speaking from Gettysburg on May 30, 1963 (Memorial Day), during the centennial year of the Emancipation Proclamation, Johnson connected it directly with the ongoing civil rights struggles of the time, saying "One hundred years ago, the slave was freed. One hundred years later, the Negro remains in bondage to the color of his skin.... In this hour, it is not our respective races which are at stake—it is our nation. Let those who care for their country come forward, North and South, white and Negro, to lead the way through this moment of challenge and decision.... Until justice is blind to color, until education is unaware of race, until opportunity is unconcerned with color of men's skins, emancipation will be a proclamation but not a fact. To the extent that the proclamation of emancipation is not fulfilled in fact, to that extent we shall have fallen short of assuring freedom to the free."<ref>{{cite web|title=Remarks of Vice President Lyndon B. Johnson|date=May 30, 1963|url=http://www.lbjlib.utexas.edu/johnson/archives.hom/speeches.hom/630530.asp|url-status=dead|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20120329112921/http://www.lbjlib.utexas.edu/johnson/archives.hom/speeches.hom/630530.asp|archive-date=March 29, 2012}}</ref>

As president, Johnson again invoked the proclamation in a speech presenting the [[Voting Rights Act]] at a joint session of Congress on Monday, March 15, 1965. This was one week after violence had been inflicted on peaceful civil rights marchers during the [[Selma to Montgomery marches]]. Johnson said "it's not just Negroes, but really it's all of us, who must overcome the crippling legacy of bigotry and injustice. And [[We Shall Overcome#Use in the 1960s civil rights and other protest movements|we shall overcome]]. As a man whose roots go deeply into Southern soil, I know how agonizing racial feelings are. I know how difficult it is to reshape the attitudes and the structure of our society. But a century has passed—more than 100 years—since the Negro was freed. And he is not fully free tonight. It was more than 100 years ago that Abraham Lincoln—a great President of another party—signed the Emancipation Proclamation. But emancipation is a proclamation and not a fact. A century has passed—more than 100 years—since equality was promised, and yet the Negro is not equal. A century has passed since the day of promise, and the promise is unkept. The time of justice has now come, and I tell you that I believe sincerely that no force can hold it back. It is right in the eyes of man and God that it should come, and when it does, I think that day will brighten the lives of every American."<ref>{{cite web|title=We Shall Overcome|author=Lyndon B. Johnson|date=March 15, 1965|url=http://www.historyplace.com/speeches/johnson.htm}}</ref>