Remembering "Juneteenth"

Get the Point!

Not long after the bloody Battle of Antietam in September of 1862, President Abraham Lincoln, fearing an impossibly long war ahead, made a decision that he hoped would turn the tide in favor of the Union.

A family of Blacks harvesting cotton circa 1890

Earlier that year, in April of 1862 to be exact, Lincoln had signed an Emancipation Act that freed enslaved Blacks in Washington, D.C. (and compensated slave owners $300 per "lost" Black man, woman, or child). Such was the underpinning of his subsequent executive order forever known as the "Emancipation Proclamation," one that purported to free enslaved Blacks in all states then "in rebellion" as of January 1, 1863 with hopes that word would travel south and compel Blacks to leave plantations—thus causing a logistical nightmare for the Confederacy—and providing a potential source for new troops for the Union.

I note "purported" in the above paragraph because the Proclamation had no real legal effect upon said rebellious states that did not recognize Lincoln's authority—and it had absolutely NO immediate effect on slavery in Maryland, Delaware, West Virginia, Kentucky, and Missouri, each a slavery supporting state that remained loyal to the Union.

After Confederate General Robert E. Lee surrendered to Union General Ulysses S. Grant on April 9, 1865, slavery—in theory—was over in the South. Due to the snail's pace of news and in some instances, the hard hearted nature of rebellious southerners, fighting continued in some areas well into May (and even deeper into the summer of 1865 on the high seas as the CSS Shenandoah continued to wage war upon Union vessels). This slow pace held true for emancipation news also, thus the May 20th "Emancipation Day" commemoration in Florida that recognizes the date that enslaved Blacks in my native Sunshine State learned of their freedom. In Texas, news of Black freedom did not become formalized until mid-June, which was over two and half years after the Emancipation Proclamation went into effect—and over two months after Lee surrendered to Grant.

Enslaved Blacks in states like Arkansas, western Louisiana, and Texas were still toiling in bondage for nearly two months after the Civil War had ended with Lee’s surrender at Appomattox…

On June 19, 1865, Union Maj. Gen. Gordon Granger issued a field order (depicted below) in Galveston, Texas which read:

"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 rights and rights of property between former masters and slaves, and the connection heretofore existing between them becomes that between employer and free laborer.”

In the years since 1866, Gen. Granger's order has been observed as "Juneteenth" by Blacks in Texas. Over the succeeding decades, Juneteenth has been commemorated by formerly enslaved Blacks and their descendants across America who pay homage to the tears, toils, and tumult that our people experienced by being chained and dragged to America in the bellies of cramped ships; sold like livestock at auctions; beaten, raped, and killed with impunity while being worked from "can't see to can't see" planting and harvesting the cotton, tobacco, sugar, and rice that made the U.S. economy one of the world's strongest by the end of the 19th Century.

My maternal Great Grandfather Charlie Williams was born to formerly enslaved parents Charlie and Georgia Williams in Camilla, Georgia in 1884, and upon his death in 1982, became my last ancestor with a direct tie to the “Peculiar Institution” of slavery…

Lest we forget the enslaved Black bodies that were broken from clearing the swamps and forests as new territory was ceded to the U.S. by Spain, France, and Mexico, and the Black backs that were broken from cutting the rocks and erecting the cornerstones while building monuments and facilities in Washington, D.C.—including the White House—that stand as enduring legacies of the ideal of American freedom—and how true freedom was denied for so long for so many Black people in America.