“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 personal rights and rights of property between former masters and slaves, and the connection heretofore existing between them becomes that between employer and hired labor.” ~ Union General Gordon Granger.
General Granger arrived in Galveston, Texas, on June 19, 1865, two years after the execution of the Emancipation Proclamation; approximately 250,000 enslaved men, women, and children were informed—at least on paper, that all Americans were free; unlike the Declaration of Independence, which excluded blacks, this fulfilled the country’s mission, or so was hoped. Once the country officially admitted equality came the political and moral fight for equity. Today, a large portion of the country wants to deny its’ children the truth in place of an American utopia that does not exist. Jim Crow, Tulsa, Martin Luther King Jr, and George Floyd had their points of light dimmed by unfulfilled promises by America.
There is hope amongst the carnage visited upon black Americans by a society that just wanted blacks to serve the table but not take a seat. Unfortunately, most attempts at steps forward were met by ropes pulling minorities back. When the first black congressman Hiram Rhodes Revels was elected to Congress in Mississippi in 1870, the government tied itself in self-recriminatory knots to block Revels from taking his seat. Congress asserted he was not a citizen. The Constitution required senators to hold citizenship for at least nine years, and they argued Revels had only recently become a citizen with the 1866 Civil Rights Act and the 14th Amendment. Before that, the Supreme Court had ruled in its 1857 Dred Scott decision that Black people weren’t U.S. citizens.
When other specious attempts failed to stop fourteen other black men from joining the American Congress, it gave rise to organized violent white terrorists and supremacy groups like the White League, the Red Shirts, and the Ku Klux Klan.
Fear and intimidation temporarily cool down and suppress freedom, but in the words of Maya Angelou, “still I rise.” With their men’s bodies hanging from trees, burned, gunned down in driveways and balconies, black women, as they long had, would not quit. Fannie Lou Hamer, Rosa Parks, Betty Shabazz, Myrlie Evers-Williams, and Coretta Scott King were secret weapons. “Women have been the backbone of the whole civil rights movement,” said Scott-King.
Before my six-inch afro and dashiki, I remember feeling insulted if someone called me ‘black’ or ‘African.’As far back as junior high, my friends and I would light fireworks, ignite cherry bombs, and feel puzzled at the idea of celebrating the freedom that was denied our ancestors. By the 1970s, red, black, and green flags were sewn to the breast pockets of our jackets and sleeves; we talked about Juneteenth for the first time in our lives. Maybe it is progress when stores sell discount merchandise, people drink and barbecue, and the McDonald’s Juneburger gets a jingle. I am proud to celebrate Juneteenth, but I hope we take a moment to remember a lot of blood, sweat, and tears were shed, reaching this stage;
Out of the huts of history’s shame
I rise
Up from a past that’s rooted in pain
I rise
I’m a black ocean, leaping and wide,
Welling and swelling I bear in the tide. ~Still I Rise, Maya Angelou,
Continue to Vote for Change.