WHAT DO YOU KNOW ABOUT ”JUNETEENTH”?

The first Juneteenth committee in 1908

The slaves were freed by Lincoln in 1863, but some didn’t find out until 1865.

I learned about the holiday “Juneteenth” back when I was in high school.

I was a good friend with a high school football team-mate, and he was the only African American in my graduating class in a Northern California high school. 

On one New Year’s Eve, three other classmates and myself, we got our sleeping bags and set up a big barrel for a raging fire in the living room of an old abandoned house in the middle of a local orchard.  We each had brought a six-pack of beer and booze for celebrating the new year.  We all just sat around, drinking, and telling stories.

At that time, with the 4 of us already pretty wasted, my African American friend proceeded to tell us what it felt like to be a negro attending a white school, (this was well before they used the word “black” to describe themselves).  He also told us a little about “Juneteenth” and that it was a very important holiday to many African American families.

Being born in Virginia, I later had asked my southern mother about “Juneteenth”, and she agreed that the negro’s around where she was raised, and where I was born, they always celebrated “Juneteenth”.

Since that New Year’s Eve so many years ago, over time, I learn more about this special “holiday” for America’s blacks.

I had learned in school that it was on January 1, 1863, when Lincoln’s, Emancipation Proclamation was issued.  But I later learned that the word to the slaves did not go out quickly, nor was the president’s declaration even followed in some states for up to two years, after being declared.

It was on June 19, 1865, when there were African slaves still being held in bondage on Galveston Island, Texas.  It also turned out that they were the last slaves to learn that they had been freed by the declaration two years previously.

These slaves learned the news from Union soldiers under Major General, Gordon Granger, who’s regiment had finally worked its way south to spread the word.  Granger read from General Order No. 33, which proclaimed “absolute equality of personal rights and rights of property, between former masters and slaves, and the connection heretofore existing between them, become that between employer and hired labor.”

Upon hearing the news, those former Texas slaves then celebrated for days. 

This was the beginning of the holiday, and today, Juneteenth is a state holiday in Texas, and it is officially recognized by 42 other states.  From 1865 onward, Juneteenth celebrations took place throughout the nation for decades.  Unfortunately, they kind of faded away in the early 20th century.

However, today, there has been a resurgence of the celebrations, and several former US presidents have also observed Juneteenth.

This last week, the legacy of Juneteenth was being considered at a meeting of the House Judiciary Committee with House Resolution, HR. 40, introduced by Rep. Sheila Jackson Lee of Texas.

The bill is designed: To address the fundamental injustice, cruelty, brutality, and inhumanity of slavery in the United States and the 13 American colonies between 1619 and 1865.  It is also to establish a commission to study and consider a national apology and proposal for reparations for the institution of slavery.  It will address the current racial and economic discrimination against African-Americans, and the impact of these forces on today’s living African-Americans.  It will make recommendations to the Congress on appropriate remedies, and for other purposes.

This is all well and good, but in the US Senate, the Republican leader, Mitch McConnell, has already said that since there is no one alive today that had anything to do with the nation’s former slavery issues, there should be no consideration for reparations or to address the nations black’s racial and economic discrimination.

In other words, if McConnell has his way, this issue will once again go nowhere.

It’s time for the self-proclaimed, “Senate Grim Reaper”, Mitch McConnell, to just go away.

Copyright G. Ater 2019