"VOTING AND JUNETEENTH"

“VOTING AND JUNETEENTH”

            Tomorrow is Primary Voting Day in Georgia, already pushed back twice because of Covid-19.  It is one of the quintessential parts of being an American, and because of that, it has always been in contention in American history.  The right to pick one’s leaders via voting in America was originally meant only for white men of property.  The idea of equality which is the foundation of voting, however, could not be contained by comfortable white men.  It is an idea whose power has called out to so many groups who were originally denied the vote and even denied their own humanity. 

            Voting is necessary for a society built on the idea of equality – without access to the vote, there can be no equality.  Yet, voting is not sufficient to build that equality.  That work must be done in the streets and in the community venues and in the intersections of power and race and gender and economic status.  We are now engaged in such a struggle in the aftermath of the murders of George Floyd,  Breeona Taylor and Ahmaud Arbery and many others.  It is not clear what the future holds on this, but all of us of goodwill are hoping that it will bring a fundamental shift so that African-Americans and other people of color will be seen not as “other” but as “sibling,” by both individuals and by institutions.  This struggle is both long and continuing.

            On June 19, many folk will celebrate the Emancipation Proclamation on “Juneteenth,” the name given to the event in Texas, where news of the Proclamation  and the Union defeat of the Confederacy did not reach African-Americans held in slavery in Texas until June 19, 1865.  At that time, U.S. General Gordon Granger arrived in Galveston with 2,000 federal troops and made this General Order #3:

“The people of Texas are informed that, in accordance with a proclamation from the Executive of the United States, all slaves are free. This involves an absolute equality of personal rights and rights of property between former masters and slaves, and the connection heretofore existing between them becomes that between employer and hired labor. The freedmen are advised to remain quietly at their present homes and work for wages. They are informed that they will not be allowed to collect at military posts and that they will not be supported in idleness either there or elsewhere.”

            Juneteenth has become the most recognized national celebration of the end of legal slavery in the country.  Many other dates could qualify, and some are celebrated:  watch night services in African-American churches on December 31 of each year, similar  to the ones in 1862, right before the Proclamation took effect;  January 31, when the 13^th Amendment abolishing slavery passed Congress;  December 6, when the states ratified the 13^th Amendment. Yet, Juneteenth has held on for many reasons.  Here’s a link to a good article on Juneteenth by my friend and Oakhurster Zeena Regis https://www.presbyterianmission.org/story/pt-0520-juneteenth/

            Perhaps the biggest reason that Juneteenth has held on is that it expresses both celebration and ambivalence.  Celebration that there was finally some recognition of the humanity and equality of people of African descent.  Ambivalence because there was so much reluctance to get this news to the people of Texas.  The racism that would eviscerate the Union victory over the next 40 years, after the Civil War,  could be seen in the last sentence of Order #3 – though African-Americans had built the wealth of much of America, they were still seen as being “in idleness.”  The order arrived over 2 years after the Emancipation Proclamation and two months after the Confederate surrender at Appomattox.  As WEB Dubois put it:  “The slave went free; stood a brief moment in the sun; then moved back again toward slavery.”

            So, on June 19,  find a way to celebrate the great American vision of the fundamental equality of all people.  Find a way to acknowledge how deeply white supremacy still has a hold on our hearts and vision.  Find a way to work against that captivity, as did Frederick Douglass and Abby Kelley and William Lloyd Garrison and Harriet Tubman and Ida Wells and Anne Braden and Martin Luther King, Jr., and Fannie Lou Hamer and Ella Baker and many others have done.  And, don’t forget to vote!