This is an archived article that was published on sltrib.com in 2015, and information in the article may be outdated. It is provided only for personal research purposes and may not be reprinted.
Washington • U.S. Rep. Mia Love, R-Utah, joined President Barack Obama and congressional leaders Wednesday to mark the 150th anniversary of the end of slavery in America, a ceremony in which Obama said America would betray the efforts of progress if "we fail to push back against bigotry in all its forms."
Without naming leading GOP presidential candidate Donald Trump, who has called for a ban of Muslims coming to the United States, Obama said Americans can create the change they want – such as overcoming a dark time in the nation's history with slavery and racial segregation – if they rise above cynicism and hold to their values.
Americans should, Obama said, "remember that our freedom is bound up with the freedom of others — regardless of what they look like or where they come from or what their last name is or what faith they practice."
Love, the first black female Republican in Congress, was one of several members who spoke about passage of the Constitution's 13th Amendment, which made slavery illegal.
The Utah congresswoman said that Utah didn't become a state until 31 years after the 1865 ratification of the amendment, but she noted there were some slaves who were forced to make the westward trek.
"The practice of slavery was not considered widespread among the pioneers, but some did bring slaves with them during the expansion to the West," she said to the crowd gathered in the Capitol Visitors Center's Emancipation Hall.
Love, whose parents emigrated from Haiti, noted that Congress abolished slavery in the nation's territories in 1862.
House Speaker Paul Ryan took the stage after Love and noted that while one of the more important watershed moments in the nation's history was the passage of the 13th Amendment, its language was brief.
"The 13th Amendment is just 43 words long. It is so short that, when you read it, you can almost miss the whole significance," Ryan said. "You have to stop and remind yourself that 600,000 people died in the Civil War – 600,000 died over 43 words. Or to be more precise, they died in a war that decided whether those 43 words would ever be written."
While the main focus of the ceremony stayed on the history of the 13th Amendment, Obama strayed into modern politics, arguing that "we would do a disservice to those warriors of justice" like Harriet Tubman, Frederick Douglass, Abraham Lincoln and Martin Luther King Jr. "were we to deny that the scars of our nation's original sin are still with us today.
"We condemn ourselves to shackles once more if we fail to answer those who wonder if they're truly equals in their communities, or in their justice systems, or in a job interview," Obama said. "We betray the efforts of the past if we fail to push back against bigotry in all its forms."
The president's remarks were interrupted with applause several times by the audience, which included many members of the Congressional Black Caucus.