January 6 · This Day in America
Europe is burning and Britain stands nearly alone, but America is not yet in the war. Into that uncertainty Franklin Roosevelt walks before Congress and tries to say plainly what the fight is about. He names four freedoms he believes belong to every person, everywhere in the world: freedom of speech, freedom of worship, freedom from want, freedom from fear. Not someday, he insists — not a distant millennium, but a kind of world attainable in our own time and generation. It is a stunning thing for a head of state to claim out loud while the outcome is unknown. The words outlive the war. Norman Rockwell paints them; the United Nations writes them into its charter; the Universal Declaration of Human Rights carries them forward. One ordinary January message becomes a description of what the world is allowed to ask for.
Source: www.archives.gov
Also on this day · 1912
After more than sixty years as a territory — one of the longest waits in the nation — New Mexico is admitted to the Union. President Taft signs the proclamation in Washington with little ceremony, surrounded by thirteen visitors from the new state, and offers only a wry blessing: "Well, it is all over. I am glad to give you life. I hope you will be healthy." The land of pueblos and high desert, older in settled history than almost anywhere in the country, finally gets its star.
Source: www.history.com
“That is no vision of a distant millennium. It is a definite basis for a kind of world attainable in our own time and generation.”Franklin D. Roosevelt, 1941