"JUNETEENTH"

 “JUNETEENTH”

    In 2021, Juneteenth was made a national holiday, thanks to the efforts of many people.  This week 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.”

The recognition of Juneteenth is a reminder of two of the most powerful forces in American history, forces that are opposed to one another.  One is the idea of equality, and the other is the idea of white supremacy (and the slavery that goes with it).  These have been warring ideas in American history.  The idea of equality – the vision that all human beings are created with equal dignity – is a powerful one in American history.  It was born in Europe, but it found its deepest expression in the colonies of America.  This idea of equality is one of the great and unexpected gifts of the American experience.  It is a revolutionary idea, and it calls out to all structures -  class structures, racial categories,  gender categories – that their time is winding down, that a new way of looking at ourselves and at one another is emerging in the world.  That way is the idea of equality, the idea that we are all created with equal dignity.  That way is the idea that the institutional and structural foundations of society should be reformed to reflect this radical idea.

Yet, as we all are well aware, this powerful gift of equality is always banging up against the idea of white supremacy, which seeks to tell us that those of us classified as “white” that we are superior and are meant to be in control.  We see the power of the idea of white, male supremacy growing now under the Trump administration and in the racist turn of SCOTUS, which recently eviscerated the last remaining vestige of protection from the Voting Rights Act.  As if on cue, Southern states have hurried to redistrict so that they can dilute, and in some cases, end the power of Black voting.

            It is now time to step up, speak up, and act out.  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.  Let us join in that parade of witnesses. Let us find ourselves in that Juneteenth parade.

"THE CONTINUING STRUGGLE"

 “THE CONTINUING STRUGGLE”

The presidency of Donald Trump is a continuing nightmare, but as I wrote last week, it is not a aberration.  It is rather a continuance of the Reagan Revolution in response to the movements for justice and equity of the 1960”s+.  Trump is an extreme form of this counter-revolution, and I am hoping that he will implode before he can do too much more damage.

In the meantime, there are several approaches that we can take in order to stay in resistance to this movement.  The first step is TO VOTE.  Thanks to the right-wing SCOTUS, the white supremacists are seeking to rig elections everywhere, but if we turn out in adequate numbers, their machinations can be defeated.  There are primaries going on everywhere, so make sure that you vote in them.  For the November elections, make sure that you are registered to vote and make sure that all your friends, neighbors and colleagues are registered to vote.  We will need a huge turnout in the fall so that Congress can be retaken.  The Trumpster will seek to delay the elections under the guise of national security (that’s what Bill Pulte is now working on), but the states are generally in control of elections, so let’s work on that end too.

The other, more immediate step is to speak up and act out.  This step is critical – do not remain silent or stay on the sidelines, complaining about how bad things are.  Join protests, write elected officials, speak out to the press, engage your friends and neighbors.  Every two weeks, Caroline and I participate in the “Old People’s Protest” in Stone Mountain, and we usually have 40-50 people who turn out in their walkers, canes, and wheelchairs, gathering at a busy intersection to protest the Trumpster actions and presidency.  We were there this past Saturday, and we got lots of honks and waves (and a few middle fingers too).  Find some place to make this kind of public witness – this one was started by several older folk in a senior living residence, and it has grown and grown.  So, find a group to join in expressing public dissent, or start your own.

A third step is to assist in smaller groups who are working for social justice and equity.  There are lots of groups around – if you are not already part of one or more, join in so that they may be bolstered in their work.  Our friend John Vodicka coordinates the Court Watch program in Athens, Georgia, and they have developed a Bail Fund to help people with minor offenses make bail so that they can get out of jail.  You would be surprised at the number of people held in jail because they do not have funds for a $100 bail (or less).  Our friend Mary Catherine Johnson directs New Hope House in Jackson, Georgia, a residence for families to stay while they visit their loved ones on death row in Jackson.  Our friend and co-author Dr. Catherine Meeks directs Turquoise and Lavender Institute for Transformation & Healing, and she is constantly writing and speaking on behalf of justice and equity.  Find ways to support these groups or ones like them.  Or, find them in your locale and begin donating time and money.  

These are dangerous and scary times as the river of white, male supremacy bursts out of its borders and threatens to flood us all with the pollution of racism, sexism, materialism, and militarism.  Let us work on these three steps in order to combat these forces.  As Sweet Honey in the Rock put it their song “Battle for My Life:”  “the white man’s disease is the same across the seas.”  We are in a battle for our lives.  Let us rise up to meet the occasion.

"IS THE REAGAN REVOLUTION NEARING COMPLETION?"

 “IS THE REAGAN REVOLUTION NEARING COMPLETION?”

I’m a little late coming to Imani Perry’s fine book “South to America: A Journey Below the Mason-Dixon to Understand the Soul of a Nation,’ but in reading of her travels South and her reflections on it, I am reminded of how the deep the resistance is to the justice movements of the 1960’s:  movements on race, gender, sexual orientation, class, capitalism, and environmental justice.  And, as Dr. Perry’s book demonstrates, the resistance to these justice movements is not just located in the South – it is a deep part of our national history.  She was born in Alabama, so she knows our language and our approaches to life, but in them, she also sees the depth of white, male supremacy that continues to plague us all as a nation.

As SCOTUS continues to strike down basic civil rights protection, I am taken back to the part of my life where I began to change on these issues:  in the decade of the 1960’s.  One of my friends scoffs at the 60’s, calling it a time of self-indulgence,  the rise of the individual, and the breaking of community in America.  While some of that is true, it was also a time when old ways of oppression and death began to be mitigated, including the thundering resistance to the Vietnam War, and when new communities - more centered on justice - began to form. Whatever one thinks of the 60’s, however, the movements for justice in that decade were strong enough to call forth a powerful counter-revolution, a revolution that got its sea legs under Ronald Reagan’s presidency.  Nixon began it in the 1968 presidential election with his “Southern Strategy,” teaching white males how to re-institute racism without ever mentioning race.  It is a strategy that they have followed ever since.

Nixon’s own personal shortcomings short-circuited this counter-revolution, and this movement would wait on a TV star/actor from California to lead it.  Reagan came into office in 1980, beginning his campaign for the presidency at the Neshoba County Fair in Philadelphia, Mississippi, the site of the kidnaping and murdering of three civil rights workers in 1964: James Chaney, Andrew Goodman, and Michael Schwerner.  He never mentioned any of that, but his unspoken message was that he would be the candidate to restore white, male supremacy.  His approach would be that government is the problem, not the solution.  To those white people in the South and beyond who railed at the federal interventions on education, civil rights, and women’s rights, this approach was music to their ears.  In this way, Reagan began a counter-revolution that continues – don’t tell those of us classified as “white” how to live our lives, don’t mess with us.

This revolution has continued to move forward – from the defeat of the Equal Rights Movement to Lee Atwater’s use of Willie Horton to propel George H.W. Bush to the presidency to the ascendance of a right-wing Supreme Court to the invasions of Iraq by the Bush dynasty, to the cuts in public assistance and the growth of prisons under the Clinton administration to the disasters of the W Bush administration to the blasphemy that is the Trump administration.  We should be clear here – the presidency of Donald Trump is not an aberration.  It is rather the culmination of a counter-revolution that began almost 50 years ago, a movement that began in response to the push for justice and equity in the 1960’s.

There are, of course, movements for justice and equity that continue.  The election of Barack Obama as the first African-American President of the United States was a stunning achievement, but it scared many white folks to death, and it led us to Donald Trump as president.  Black Lives Matter, the renewed fight for the ERA, Gay Pride, the fight for preservation of the earth – all these speak of the continuing powerful and deep energy for the idea of liberty and justice for all.  I’ll continue this conversation next week, but for now, I want us to be mindful that Trump is not an aberration.  In many ways, he is the culmination of the Reagan counter-revolution.  And, yes, it will be wonderful if the Democrats can regain control of Congress in November but let us be clear-eyed on this:  the Reagan Revolution will continue.