Washington, July 2 -- Congresswoman Stacey E. Plaskett issued the following press release:
Congresswoman Stacey E. Plaskett (D-USVI) issued the following statement commemorating Virgin Islands Emancipation Day and the 250th Anniversary of American Independence:
"Two hundred and fifty years ago, this nation declared to the world that all men are created equal, that governments derive their just powers from the consent of the governed. That declaration, signed in Philadelphia on July 3rd, 1776, drove the principal goals of the American Revolution. 72 years later, enslaved men and women of the Danish West Indies rose up for their own freedom from chattel slavery and received their own proclamation of emancipation in Frederiksted on St. Croix...