"JUNETEENTH"

“JUNETEENTH”

On one level, it is odd that there is no nationally recognized day that celebrates the end of slavery in the USA.  Such a huge event in American history, and there is no universally recognized day for it.  Part of that lack is the fact that slavery did not really end until the Voting Rights Act was signed into law on August 6, 1965.  Between the 13th Amendment which officially banished slavery in USA (except for those in prison, a HUGE exception) and the Voting Rights Act, neo-slavery filled in for white supremacy.  This latter period is often called “Jim Crow,” but that title does not allow the full depth of the depravity of racism and white supremacy to be revealed.  Indeed, calling the period from 1870 to 1965 “Jim Crow” allows us to obscure the real history of oppression in that period.  Neo-Slavery is a much better name for that period.

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 13th Amendment abolishing slavery passed Congress;  December 6, when the states ratified the 13th Amendment. Yet, Juneteenth has held on for many reasons. 

            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.”

We are now in a time when white supremacy is seeking to re-assert its traditional hold on American consciousness.  The passage of so many state laws seeking to limit and to confine the vote is a direct response of white supremacy to growing numbers of voters of color.  The desire to suppress the teaching of “critical race theory” comes from the hearts of the white mentality that destroyed Reconstruction and re-established Neo-Slavery.  This is a dangerous time in our history, as the forces of oppression and white supremacy are re-gathering strength.  But, there are so many witnesses to a different way!

            So, on June 19,  celebrate Juneteenth, and celebrate all those witnesses who have worked for equality and justice for all.  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.  As June Jordan put it in her powerful “Poem For South African Women:  “we are the ones we have been waiting for.”