First lady Melania Trump viewed the document that gives significance to Juneteenth after her husband ignited controversy over the day commemorating the end of slavery.
Housing and Urban Development Secretary Ben Carson, the only black member of the president’s Cabinet, toured the National Archives with the first lady on Thursday. The duo viewed the Emancipation Proclamation, the Charters of Freedom, and General Order No. 3, the proclamation announced on June 19, 1865, more than two years after the Emancipation Proclamation, that all slaves were freed.
“During our country’s long march towards freedom, the Emancipation Proclamation and the Charters of Freedom continue to reaffirm our country’s democratic ideals and the values that have inspired me and all Americans to this day,” the first lady said in a statement.
Their visit, which was unannounced, came on the eve of Juneteenth when the president was originally scheduled to hold a rally in Tulsa, Oklahoma. He later postponed the event by a day after backlash over holding a rally on a day that honors the end of slavery in a city that had one of the country’s bloodiest incidents of racial violence.
The president said in an interview earlier this week with Fox News that the date was meant to be “a celebration.”
He claimed in a separate interview with the Wall Street Journal that he made Juneteenth “very famous” because “nobody had ever heard of” the holiday before he brought it up. President Trump also said he learned of the meaning of Juneteenth from a black Secret Service agent.
