A Reflection of Juneteenth
by Joey McDonald, Manager of Events & Volunteers
Juneteenth (short for “June Nineteenth”) marks the day when federal troops arrived in Galveston, Texas in 1865 to take control of the state and ensure that all enslaved people be freed. The troops’ arrival came two and a half years after the signing of the Emancipation Proclamation.
The Oxford English Dictionary defines freedom as:
‘The state of not being imprisoned or enslaved…the absence of subjection to foreign domination or despotic government…and the power or right to act, speak, or think as one wants without hindrance or restraint’
Throughout the 17th and 18th centuries, Africans were caught and forcibly taken from their homeland, shuttled across an ocean in miserable conditions, sold like cattle to American colonists, forced into slavery. Stripped of their heritages, livelihoods, societies, languages, cultures, and religions, frightened and afraid, newly enslaved peoples were exploited and abused.
243 years after the first Africans were enslaved in this country, President Abraham Lincoln, on September 22, 1862, issued the preliminary Emancipation Proclamation. This document declared that as of January 1, 1863, all enslaved people in the states currently engaged in rebellion against the Union “shall be then, thenceforward, and forever free.” It was another two and a half years before U.S. General Gordon Granger stood on Texas soil and read General Orders №3: “The people of Texas are informed that, in accordance with a proclamation from the Executive of the United State, all slaves are free.”
Celebrations broke out among newly freed Black people, and Juneteenth was born. That December, slavery in America was formally abolished with the adoption of the 13th Amendment. The year following 1865, freedmen in Texas organized the first of what became the annual celebration of “Jubilee Day” on June 19. In the ensuing decades, Juneteenth commemorations featured music, barbecues, prayer services and other activities, and as Black people migrated from Texas to other parts of the country the Juneteenth tradition spread.
Though the Union victory freed the nation’s four million enslaved people, the legacy of slavery continues to influence American history, from the Reconstruction to the civil rights movement that emerged a century after, to the recognition that Black Lives Matter. 402 years after the first slaves were brought to the United States, and 159 years after the Emancipation Proclamation, the descendants of the enslaved Africans are still fighting for basic freedoms to survive while living Black. Black peoples’ freedoms are challenged daily while we do such mundane things as ‘waiting for a friend at Starbucks’, ‘working out at a gym’, ‘sleeping in a dorm common room’, campaigning door-to-door’, and ‘asking for directions.’ No written document is going to change that. No decree or proclamation. What is needed is an honest discussion on the dirty history of this country and the effects of slavery and racism generations later.
So, this Juneteenth, as we honor the end of slavery, ask yourself the question, “What does freedom mean to me?”
