With the horror of the shooting at a black church in Charleston, South Carolina, a little more than 24 hours old, and with the racial hatred that led the murderer to fire on the members of a devout Bible study group so palpable, I feel that it’s more important than usual to point out that today, June 19, is Juneteenth—actually, the 150th anniversary of Juneteenth. It’s a celebration of the end of legal slavery in the U.S. and a reminder of how great the resistance was at the time and how jagged the path to racial equality was and continues to be.
This old white man, who considers himself reasonably well educated, knows very little about Juneteenth. I hadn’t even heard of it, I believe, until the posthumous publication of Ralph Ellison’s novel, Juneteenth, in 1999, and I might not have paid attention even then if Ellison’s Invisible Man wasn’t one of my all-time favorite novels. Juneteenth: it seemed like a strange word and an odd title to me at the time. I put the blame partly on myself for not digging deeply enough into the history of race relations in the U.S., but I can’t blame myself for not having the holiday even mentioned in the history textbooks I read in school or in the mainstream media I absorbed all my life. That omission, as well as the omission of so much of the history of racial oppression in this country from slavery to the present day, is part of that same jagged path, with all its switchbacks and washed-out bridges, we are taking in our attempts to increase our knowledge and understanding of our shared history and to move toward greater racial equality. That the road is so torturous is one of the great shames of our nation.
Here are two descriptions of the history of Juneteenth you can read if you wish. One is on the Juneteenth.com website. The other, a more caustic and cynical view titled The Hidden History Of Juneteenth, appeared on the Talking Points Memo website yesterday.
Here’s a very short history of the events leading to the holiday, which I’m quoting directly from the juneteenth.com website so I don’t put my shameful ignorance on further display:
Juneteenth is the oldest known celebration commemorating the ending of slavery in the United States. Dating back to 1865, it was on June 19th that the Union soldiers, led by Major General Gordon Granger, landed at Galveston, Texas with news that the war had ended and that the enslaved were now free. Note that this was two and a half years after President Lincoln’s Emancipation Proclamation – which had become official January 1, 1863. The Emancipation Proclamation had little impact on the Texans due to the minimal number of Union troops to enforce the new Executive Order. However, with the surrender of General Lee in April of 1865, and the arrival of General Granger’s regiment, the forces were finally strong enough to influence and overcome the resistance.
This article appears in Jun 18-24, 2015.
I’m 50 and I believe I was in 2nd or 3rd grade when I first heard about Juneteenth. Maybe it was because I was taught by Catholic nuns up until 5th grade, maybe I was exposed to a lot of liberal-hippie types? All I know is I am surprised when people say they hadn’t heard of it before.
The self absorbed liberal author has to go a long way back to assuage his white guilt in his quest to pander.
Remember, this is the guy who supports taking $450,000 from the children of TUSD and giving it to H.T. Sanchez, well, at least til the teachers got on him. Then he slinked to the corner with his tail between his legs.
I continue to learn about Juneteenth because I grew in a town which had in its city ordinance that no Negroes were allowed to live in the city limits. This was discovered when I was probably in my 20’s and it was removed right away. I grew up with no African Americans and never knew any until I went to college. I learned about Juneteenth long after I arrived in Tucson and it probably wasn’t until the 1990s that I even heard about it. So I understand not knowing about it, and I also understand how insidious racism is. I do not ever remember my parents, the nuns at my schools, or even friends say a negative word about African Americans. However I grew up with the message that we do not ‘mix’ and we are different enough to always stay away from them.
My father had that message and I was probably in my 20s when I asked him about it. He was a very thoughtful ,caring person but he too was raised to ‘keep his distance’. It wasn’t until he had a bi-racial grandchild that we really talked about racism. I said to him that people like Rush Limbaugh promoted it and he agreed . His views about this commentator changed after the Oklahoma City bombing. He realized how so much of what Rush did(does) was to incite violence in many ways without actually talking about being violent. By the time my dad died, he would have been considered a liberal by today’s standards.
We have many covert ways of blaming African Americans for slavery which includes saying because we don’t have it now, African Americans should get over it. Extreme traumas exist generation after generation and we must all work together to heal out country. I heard a Civil War historian talk about this and he said he believes that had Lincoln survived, our reconstruction period probably would have been much healthier and the South would not have to continue to say it wasn’t their fault … it was the North. Lincoln understood much better that the South needed to have their identity and there were many ways that could have been accomplished respectfully. Johnson did not have those skills or even a plan and actually created a much more divisive mindset in our country. I think Juneteenth is an important remembrance day and a day to celebrate freedom. When we celebrate the 4th of July, I think it is also important to remember that African Americans were slaves then.
Giggle of the day: “What, Again” labeling someone else “self-absorbed.
It’s time for another vacation, David so you can come back and tell us about the more mystical things over the horizon instead of ALL the things you have had your eyes and your mind closed to where you live.