June 19th and the Huddled Masses.

On June 19 1862 President Lincoln signs a bill prohibiting slavery in the territories of the United States.  Three years later on this same day in 1865, Union troops arrived in Galveston, Texas, with the news that the Civil War was over, and that all remaining slaves in Texas were free, an event celebrated to this day as "Juneteenth."

In 1926 on this day twenty thousand Native Americans celebrated the 50th anniversary of the battle at Little Bighorn in which Colonel George Custer and his entire party were killed. 

In 1943 on this day, Joseph Goebbels, the Nazi German minister of propaganda, announces that Berlin is now free of Jews. 

And finally, it was a cold June 19th in 1885 when the Stature of Liberty was delivered in New York,  to remind us all that the USA has a mission of inclusiveness.

Give me your tired, your poor,

Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free, 

The wretched refuse of your teeming shore. 

Send these, the homeless, tempest-tossed to me, 

I lift my lamp beside the golden door!