It’s Time for a Third Emancipation Proclamation

July 2, 1864 

SURELY not the least interesting of the varied war pictures which we present to our readers this week will be two sketches on page 428-one, the picture of a Negro slave, who fled from Montgomery, Alabama, to Chattanooga, for the express purpose of enlisting in the army of the Union; the other, a picture of this same negro, endowed for the first time with his birth-right of freedom, and allowed the privilege dearer to him than any other—that of fighting for the nation which is hereafter pledged to protect him and his. Are these not affecting pictures which are here presented to us? On the one side, the poor fugitive oppressed with the weariness of two hundred long miles of dusty travel, a journey interrupted by a thousand necessary precautions, and harassed by timid suggestions of a fate more horrible than death if he is discovered; with his meagre covering of rags about him: and on the other side, the soldier crowned with freedom and honor. Can we not at length have faith in that heroism which has been so gloriously illustrated at Wagner and Olustee and Petersburg, and which, in the face of the Fort Pillow massacre, yet offers itself afresh in the person of a poor fugitive, who, from the heart of the enemy’s country, gives himself, at the risk of death or of a torture worse than death, to a cause simply because it is inevitably associated, with the problem of his freedom? — Civil War Harper’s Weekly, July 2nd, 1864, page 422,428

July 2, 1964

The Civil Rights Act of 1964 was landmark legislation. 

“The United States will not be fully free until all of its citizens are free.” — John F. Kennedy

Following the Civil War (1861-1865), the Civil Rights Act of 1866 was passed which prohibited racial discrimination in housing (without any enforcement provisions) and a trio of constitutional amendments. Specifically and in order, the Thirteenth Amendment (Amendment XIII) to the Constitution of the United States of America abolished slavery and involuntary servitude, except as punishment for a crime. The Fourteenth Amendment (Amendment XIV) to the Constitution of the United States of America was adopted on July, 1868, as one of the Reconstruction Era Amendments (1865-1877) and addressed citizenship rights and equal protection of the laws. Finally, the Fifteenth Amendment (Amendment XV) to the Constitution of the United States of America prohibited the federal and state governments from denying a citizen the right to vote based on that citizen’s “race, color, or previous condition of servitude.” Nevertheless, in the South, many states condoned violence from White supremacist groups like the Ku Klux Klan (KKK) and devised poll taxes, literacy tests, ”Jim Crow” laws, ”Black Codes,” the “One-Drop Rule,” and other similar legal constructs to keep Black Americans disenfranchised.

For the next eighty (80) years, after the Reconstruction Era (1865-1877), the Congress of the United States of America did not pass a single Civil Rights act. At last, in 1957, it established a Civil Rights section of the Justice Department, along with a Commission on Civil Rights to investigate discriminatory conditions. In 1961, John F. Kennedy entered the White House. As president of the United States of America, he initially delayed anti-discrimination measures, however with violent protests throughout the racially charged and divided South (including Birmingham, Alabama, where the local police brutally suppressed nonviolent demonstrators with dogs, clubs, and high-pressure fire hoses) Kennedy finally decided to act. So in June of 1963 he proposed legislation that would be by far the most comprehensive Civil Rights legislation to date and ultimately would become the Civil Rights Act of 1964. The Civil Rights Act of 1964 outlawed discrimination based on race, color, religion, sex, or national origin and ended unequal application of voter registration requirements and racial segregation in schools, at the workplace and by facilities that served the general public. While for Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. the Civil Rights Act Of 1964 was nothing less than a “Second Emancipation Proclamation,” follow-up legislation such as the Voting Rights Act of 1965, which prohibited literacy tests and other discriminatory voting practices and the Fair Housing Act of 1968, which banned discrimination in the sale, rental and financing of property was still needed.

July 2, 2014

TODAY THE BABIES ARE NOT FREE . . .

ABORTION takes the life of an innocent human being and the death toll is staggering. The number of babies aborted each year worldwide equal more than fifty-seven million (57,000,000). The number of babies aborted throughout the world since World War II is more than 1.6 billion. The top three (3) countries in number of abortions annually are as follows: (1) Red China with over eleven million (11,000,000), (2) the former Soviet Union with over six million (6,000,000) and (3) the United States of America with over one million (1,000,000). The former Soviet Union has the highest abortion/birth ratio in the world at three-hundred (300) abortions for every one-hundred (100) live births, and declining. The city with the highest abortion/birth ratio in the United States of America is Washington, D.C., at two-hundred sixty-five (265) abortions for every one-hundred (100) live births. The total number of abortions in the United States from 1967-2014 has taken over fifty-six million (56,000,000) lives. That’s more than the entire population of eighty-two (82) of the largest cities in the United States of America. Since September 11, 2001, America has aborted more than fourteen (14) million babies. By way of comparison, that’s more than twice the number [of] Jews killed during the Nazi Holocaust (6,000,000). Between 1864 and 1968, 4,946 Black Americans were lynched. That’s 47.7 per year. By way of comparison, the number of Black American babies aborted between 1973 and 2014 exceeds more than nineteen (19) million. That’s more than 450,000 per year. The number of all American battle deaths since 1776 exceeds six-hundred and fifty-thousand (650,000) lives lost in war. By way of comparison, the number of lives lost to abortion in the United States of America between 1967-2014 exceeds more than fifty-seven million (57,000,000). The ratio of American abortions to battle deaths in all American wars is 87.6 to 1.40. The number of Americans of all ages and races murdered daily by handguns is twenty-eight (28). By way of comparison, the number of American babies of all races killed every day by abortion is over three thousand (3,000). The fertility rate of women in the United States, which measures the number of expected births the average woman will have in her lifetime, dropped to under 1.87. This rate (a record low) is below replacement level (2.1 births per woman), the level at which a given generation can exactly replicate itself. To make matters worse, the total fertility rate has not been above replacement level since 2007, and it has dropped every year since. The record is clear, very clear. Abortion in the United States of America has taken more lives than any weapon formed against us to date.

In My Opinion

It’s Time for a Third Emancipation Proclamation.

“Like the United States Supreme Court of 1857 held that ‘persons of African descent cannot be, nor were ever intended to be, citizens under the United States Constitution,’ the United States Supreme Court of 1973 has held that the preborn is not a person within the meaning of the Fourteenth Amendment of the United States Constitution. However this year the Alabama Supreme Court recognized the preborn child’s inalienable right to life inherently possessed by every human being. Since 1973 over fifty-five (55) million lives have been lost to abortion. Oh My God! In my opinion, the time has come for the Pro-Life movement to push long and hard for a Third Emancipation Proclamation, legally freeing and protecting the preborn child by love and by law.” — Walter B. Hoye II

Today the original Emancipation Proclamation is rarely considered a legal document and is somehow disconnected from the United States Supreme Court. The United States Supreme Court has never adjudicated its meaning or interpretation. At best, the Emancipation Proclamation is viewed as a historical artifact and is often brought out simply to dress up an opinion or to illustrate a point. It seems whatever legal weight it might have had on Thursday, January 1, 1863, was superseded by the succeeding events of the Civil War itself and the ratification of the Thirteenth Amendment (Amendment XIII) of the United States Constitution adopted on Wednesday, December 6, 1865. The Civil Rights Act of 1964 or the “Second Emancipation Proclamation” is clearly recognized as a legal document. While it is easy to see how the Civil Rights Act of 1964 emulated the Civil Rights Acts Of 1866, 1871, 1875, 1957, and 1960, and laid the groundwork for the Civil Rights Act of 1968 in the fight for freedom for Black Americans, it is also easy to see how America has struggled with the concept “that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness” applying to all human beings. 

So when Alabama Supreme Court Chief Justice Roy S. Moore wrote in his opinion that “an unborn child has an inalienable right to life from its earliest stages of development” and then adding “I write separately to emphasize that the inalienable right to life is a gift of God that civil government must secure for all persons born and unborn” I felt new hope and promise for the future of humanity. However, when Alabama Supreme Court Associate Justice Tom Parker wrote the majority decision saying: “It is impossible for an unborn child to be a separate and distinct person at a particular point in time in one respect and not to be a separate and distinct person at the same point in time but in another respect. Because an unborn child has an inalienable right to life from its earliest stages of development, it is entitled not only to a life free from the harmful effects of chemicals at all stages of development but also to life itself at all stages of development. Treating an unborn child as a separate and distinct person in only select respects defies logic and our deepest sense of morality.” I was inspired and emboldened, sensing now is the time for the Pro-Life movement to start pushing long and hard for the rights of all human beings. When Florida Governor Rick Scott signed the Unborn Victims of Violence Act, a renewed sense of impending success for the pro-life movement soared within me as Florida was added to a growing list of states seeking to protect the human rights of unborn children. According to Clarke D. Forsythe, my friend and Senior Counsel for Americans United for Life (the legal architects of the pro-life movement), “State protection of the unborn child as a person is no longer a novel thing. It grows year by year, state by state, and the public supports it.” Protecting the human rights of all human beings from the womb to the tomb (by love and by law) is what the heart of the personhood movement is all about. In my opinion, personhood is what humanity looks like whole and what the pro-life movement looks like victorious.

Hmmmm . . .

CAN’T YOU HEAR IT?

We are surrounded by so great a cloud of witnesses that every day abortion on demand is legal and the needs of women and children go unmet, their voices grow louder and louder.

WHAT ARE THEY SAYING?

The divinely inspired witnesses are saying the promissory note of personhood is overdue and the time for a Third Emancipation Proclamation has come.

I say yes!

What say ye?

Brothers, we need to talk.

Walter B. Hoye II is both president and founder of the Issues4life Foundation http://www.issues4life.org/ and the California Civil Rights Foundation. God used the premature birth (six months, 2.1 pounds) of his son to teach him that the fetus is a person—a living, breathing human being. In 2008, Walter and his wife, Lori, were the recipients of the 4th Annual Walk for Life West Coast’s St. Gianna Molla Award for “courage under fire” in the pro-life movement. He serves as an incredible leader for the cause of the preborn despite the personal costs, and has even been unjustly jailed for his peaceful defense of the preborn on a sidewalk outside an abortion clinic. His “Letter from the Santa Rita Jail” and California Human Rights Amendment appeal for personhood entitled “Why I Can’t Wait” are now classics. Hoye has also written a book entitled, Leadership from the Inside Out.

This article has been reprinted with permission and can be found at http://www.issues4life.org/blast/2014183.html. 

References: See entire list on website.