Juneteenth – A Deeper Look
By
John C Abercrombie
Juneteenth is a large celebration in Texas that should be larger in the United States as it marks the end of slavery and the freeing of the last people enslaved in America. This should be a landmark on the road to the establishment of freedom for all citizens.
The first time I heard the term “Juneteenth,” I thought someone was pranking me. I had graduated from high school, college and was working for a prime contractor to the United States Atomic Energy Commission, I had access to top secret information, and I knew everything! My wife was a college graduate and working for the State of Washington, Department of Corrections. We had two children and neither of us had ever heard the term. What was going on?
There was a large event taking place in Kurtzman Park, the park that usually held Black events because although not strictly segregated was highly segregated. In fact, the area is commonly known as the “Tri-City Area” and one of the cities, Kennewick is reported to have been a sundown city. Translation: Blacks not welcome after sundown.
This was one of the first times that I became aware that people often migrated from one location to be followed by others from the same place. This is the pattern that my uncles followed when they moved from Union, SC to Aliquippa, PA.
Why is this significant? Many of the people in this area had roots in Texas. So what? My view of slavery is that it had been confined to the South, what did Texas have to do with it? Texas has always been depicted as the Old West. History has failed us in many ways, and this is just one of them.
One thing that was not apparent at the time is that history has been manipulated to exclude mention of Black achievement and anything that highlights the misery of being enslaved. This story highlights how people were taking advantage of these human beings even when against the law.
Slave owners took advantage of stolen land. Stolen because they did not compensate the owners of the land, they stole from the Native Americans who owned the land from the Atlantic to the Pacific Ocean. Slave owners marched their slaves to Texas to take advantage of larger swarths of free land. They marched their slaves, men, women, and children 100s of miles to get rich.
Mexico was opposed to slavery, but the idea was White settlers would impede the Comanche who were raiding Mexico. As such, there are six flags that have flown over Texas, Spanish, French, Mexico, The Long Star the Confederate States of America, and the United State.
When the Civil War started the history has been written, not by the winner of the war, but the loser. It was not a war between the states, it was a war between two warring countries. The Confederate States of America had previously been included in the Union but following the secession order being signed by William Henry Gist, governor of South Carolina a total of ten states formed a new country with a president, Jefferson Davis, a vice president, Alexander Stevens, and a constitution.
Yet we are told the myth that it was a war between the states. Keep in mind that there were slave states that remained in the United States of America and fought with the Union.
A Lincoln, 16th president of the United States entered the war with the ideal of uniting the country believing that it could not survive half free, half slave. There were almost 700,000 lost in the war, more than in World War I, World War II and Viet Nam combined.
There are questions as to hat ended slavery. Many are led to believe the Emancipation Proclamation and truth be told, it did not free the slaves in America. It freed the slaves in the Confederate States of America and was mostly just a document on paper as the South did not follow it. It was followed in those areas where the Union Army was in control, however. It did not free the slaves in the slaveholding states of America.
Those who were freed started a celebration known as Watch Meeting as they prayed, sang, and looked forward to their freedom on January 1, 1863.
Slavery was not officially over until the passage of the 13th amendment and took effect January 31, 1865, when citizenship was granted to all born or naturalized in America. This is known as the first of the Reconstruction Amendments. Which will be discussed here. Lincoln did not live to see the implementation of this important amendment. To show how serious it was taken, Mississippi did not ratify it until 2013.
The 14th amendment guaranteed equal protection under the law, although it was never full heartedly administered.
The 15th amendment guaranteeing suffrage to males (the right to vote) is the one that got Lincoln assassinated. There was a plot to kill the president, A Lincoln, the vice president, Andrew Johnson and William Seward, the secretary of state. Only the plot to kill Lincoln succeeded.
While all slavery was over in America, the word did not reach Texas, where slaves still toiled in the blazing hot sun performing backbreaking labor to enrich their owners and being subjected to all of the raw reality that is slavery, until June 19th when General Gordon Granger of the Union Army read general order three.
Considering the intent of the slaveowners, it is difficult to believe that even if Louis DeJoy were running the mail system that it would have taken that long word to reach Texas. These people were intent on maintain their source of wealth and property rights over the human rights of the enslaved.
Freeing the last slaves in America is the reason for the BIG CELEBRATION! It should be recognized by all Americans for the significance of the end of the scourge of slavery that almost tore our country asunder.
This calls for a BIG CELEBRATION! https://youtu.be/3GwjfUFyY6M
We also have links to previous posts on this subject, one for kids and the other for the older reader
Opal Lee – The Grandmother of Juneteenth
I will be speaking at the Wellford, SC Juneteenth celebration, Saturday, June 18 in the city park strting at 10:00 am. There will be food, drink and vendors available. See you there!
See them here.
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The Civil War, Part I: Crash Course US History #20
In which John Green ACTUALLY teaches about the Civil War. In part one of our two-part look at the US Civil War, John looks into the causes of the war, and the motivations of the individuals who went to war. The overarching causes and the individual motivations were not always the same, you see. John also looks into why the North won, and whether that outcome was inevitable. The North’s industrial and population advantages are examined, as are the problems of the Confederacy, including its need to build a nation at the same time it was fighting a war. As usual, John doesn’t get much into the actual battle-by-battle breakdown. He does talk a little about the overarching strategy that won the war, and Grant’s plan to just overwhelm the South with numbers. Grant took a lot of losses in the latter days of the war, but in the end, it did lead to the surrender of the South.
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On Juneteenth
The essential, sweeping story of Juneteenth’s integral importance to American history, as told by a Pulitzer Prize-winning historian and Texas native.
Weaving together American history, dramatic family chronicle, and searing episodes of memoir, Annette Gordon-Reed’s On Juneteenth provides a historian’s view of the country’s long road to Juneteenth, recounting both its origins in Texas and the enormous hardships that African Americans have endured in the century since, from Reconstruction through Jim Crow and beyond.
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Outdoor Grills
Did Abraham Lincoln really ‘free the slaves?
On September 22, 1862, US President Abraham Lincoln issued the preliminary Emancipation Proclamation. Did this actually end slavery?
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Opal Lee and What It Means to Be Free: The True Story of the Grandmother of Juneteenth
Black activist Opal Lee had a vision of Juneteenth as a holiday for everyone. This true story celebrates Black joy and inspires children to see their dreams blossom. Growing up in Texas, Opal knew the history of Juneteenth, but she soon discovered that many Americans had never heard of the holiday. Join Opal on her historic journey to recognize and celebrate “freedom for all”.
Every year, Opal looked forward to the Juneteenth picnic – a drumming, dancing, delicious party. She knew from Granddaddy Zak’s stories that Juneteenth celebrated the day the freedom news of President Lincoln’s Emancipation Proclamation finally sailed into Texas in 1865 – over two years after the president had declared it! But Opal didn’t always see freedom in her Texas town. Then one Juneteenth day when Opal was 12 years old, an angry crowd burned down her brand-new home. This wasn’t freedom at all. She had to do something! But could one person’s voice make a difference? Could Opal bring about national recognition of Juneteenth? Follow Opal Lee as she fights to improve the future by honoring the past.
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Computers
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Enslavement to Emancipation
A TV-16 special presentation. Tune in for this unprecedented television event tracing freedom’s first steps in the Nation’s Capital. “Enslavement to Emancipation” is an informative and compelling television documentary chronicling the history of the Compensated Emancipation Act of April 16, 1862, freeing the enslaved people of Washington, DC. Featured historians and experts describe the creation and history of the city’s annual Emancipation Day celebration and our continuing struggle for full democracy in DC. The documentary also highlights the single largest attempted slave escape in U.S. history — the daring and dramatic bid for freedom aboard a schooner called the Pearl. “Enslavement to Emancipation” recounts the heroic war-time contributions of what was then called the U.S. First Colored Troops, African American slaves-turned-soldiers fighting for the Union during the Civil War. These are just a few of the historic events detailed in this special television production presented only on TV-16.
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What Is Juneteenth?: What Was?
Discover more about Juneteenth, the important holiday that celebrates the end of chattel slavery in the United States.
On June 19, 1865, a group of enslaved men, women, and children in Texas gathered around a Union solder and listened as he read the most remarkable words they would ever hear. They were no longer enslaved: they were free. The inhumane practice of forced labor with no pay was now illegal in all of the United States. This news was cause for celebration, so the group of people jumped in excitement, danced, and wept tears of joy. They did not know it at the time, but their joyous celebration of freedom would become a holiday—Juneteenth—that is observed each year by more and more Americans.
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Cell Phones
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Lincoln Abolishes Slavery with the 13th Amendment | Abraham Lincoln
Lincoln develops and enacts a permanent plan to abolish slavery, in this clip from Season 1, “Saving the Union.”
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Lincoln and the Thirteenth Amendment (Concise Lincoln Library)
Long before the Civil War, Abraham Lincoln recognized the challenge American slavery posed to the ideals of the Declaration of Independence. A constitutional amendment would be the ideal solution to ending slavery, yet the idea of such an amendment conflicted with several of Lincoln’s long-held positions. In this study, Christian G. Samito examines how Lincoln’s opposition to amending the United States Constitution shaped his political views before he became president, and how constitutional arguments overcame Lincoln’s objections, turning him into a supporter of the Thirteenth Amendment by 1864.
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Health Monitors
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The 14th Amendment Explained: US Government Review
Hughes does the 14th amendment dirty. Subscribe to HipHughes History, it’s stupid easy and free
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The Second Founding: An Introduction to the Fourteenth Amendment
In The Second Founding: An Introduction to the Fourteenth Amendment, Ilan Wurman provides an illuminating introduction to the original meaning of the Fourteenth Amendment’s famous provisions “due process of law”, “equal protection of the laws”, and the “privileges or immunities” of citizenship. He begins by exploring the antebellum legal meanings of these concepts, starting from Magna Carta, the Statutes of Edward III, and the Petition of Right to William Blackstone and antebellum state court cases.
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Ambulatory Aids
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The 15th Amendment Explained: The Constitution for Dummies Series
Wrap your head around the 15th Amendment and its effect on the nation.
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The Fifteenth Amendment: African-American Men’s Right to Vote (Constitution (Springfield, Union County, N.J.).)
Examines the Amendment which gave African-American men the right to vote and discusses the struggle that took place to regain this right when it was denied
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Diabetic Supplies
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People wonder what is this new-fangled “Juneteenth” holiday, we have never heard of it? There are 2 primary reasons, the lack of information on Black achievement and the lack of information on the horrors of slavery. This is indeed a big celebration and should be celebrated widely as it marks the freeing of the last of the enslaved people in America. It is a BIG CELEBRATION!