Purpose: A proclamation to revere and welcome our immigrant friends and their contribution to our country
Date: January 17, 1919
(Original document available here)
Out of the strife of Europe is emerging the cherished hope of Poland. With those brave people, undaunted by generations of oppression, maintaining a national unity against the efforts of a triple despotism, the spirit of America has a peculiar sympathy. Theirs is no passing fancy, no transient effort for liberty. Contemporaneous with Washington and Franklin, with Burke and Chatham, and with Lafayette and Mirabeau are Kosciusko and Pulaski. By the Polish blood shed for our own liberty in the past, by the strength which millions of Poles contribute to the character of our citizenship in the present, they have earned the right to our recognition and support. To their efforts for a reunited country, for a free government, for an ordered liberty under the self-sacrificing leadership of their patriot Paderewski, the people of Massachusetts desire to give their full and substantial approbation. Believing in the justice of their cause, mindful of our own obligations, I urge that the people of the Commonwealth observe Sunday, January 26, as Polish Day with the ceremony befitting the triumph of a people redeemed from despotism.
Given at the Executive Chamber, in Boston, this seventeenth day of January, in the year of Our Lord one thousand nine hundred and nineteen, and of the Independence of the United States of America the one hundred and forty third.
Citation: Messages to the General Court, Official Addresses, Proclamations and State Papers of His Excellency Governor Calvin Coolidge
The Coolidge Foundation gratefully acknowledges the volunteer efforts of Robert Manchester, who prepared this document for digital publication.