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‘ c ¢@ ; ~ ' One hundred years ago, Abraham Lincoln, a son of Kentucky, proclaimed that all persons held as slaves in the area a of rebellion, “henceforward shail be free." ~ We Join today, in the Centennial of that proclanstion ¢ to rededicate ourselves to the parallel doctrine that all Americans, of whatever race or creed, shall also be equal. . LO, . The Emancipation Proclamation was an act of great courage and great clarity. As Lincoln went to sign it, he said: "If my name goes down in history, it will be for this act. My whole Soul is in it. If my hand trembles wnen I sign this proclanation, all who examine the document hereafter will say: “He hesitated." But Lincoln's hand did not tremble. He did not hesitate. As always, he saw with greater vision than those around him what issues were at stake in the war, He called the Proclamation an act of justice and invoked upon ae the "considered judgment of mankind and ‘the gracious favor of Mindanty a.” On another occasion, he tied his act to the essence of our tational purpose, saying, “In giving freedom to the slave, we assure freedom to the free." The signing of the Emancipation Proclamation started the Clock of progress ticking toward the day when all Americans could live, in practice, according to the national ideal that all men are born free, with equal oppor- tunity to obtain justice and equal opportunity to pursue--and obtain--happiness, But a quarter century later, the clock practically stopped. For the next fifty years, the doctrine of "separate but equal” lay like a dead hand on the springs of progress. The nation had not retained nor understood the clarity of Lincoln’ 8 } purpose. It was 5 another son of Kentucky who saw most precisely when our nation stopped moving ahead towards equal opportunity for all Americans. Mr. Justice John Marshall Harlan, a former slave owner himself, and an opponent of the enactment of the Thirteenth, Fourteenth, and Fifteenth Amendments to the Constitution, was a native of Boyle County who served on the Supreme Court of the United States for 33 years. His was a dissenting voice on questions of racial equality and the commands of the Constitution, but it, also, was a voice of great clarity. In 1883 the Court struck down what was to be the last action of Congress in the civil rights field from 1875 to 1957. Justice Harlan predicted in his dissent to that opinion that "we shall enter upon an era of constitutional law, when the rights of freedom and American citizenship cannot receive from the nation that efficient protection which heretofore was unhesitatingly ac- corded to slavery and the rights of the master.” pe care, ee