Juneteenth - Meaningful Ways to Commemorate the Day

Juneteenth

Our marketing team at Sequential Tech has spent considerable time discussing our approach to Juneteenth. How will we recognize the day? How do we ensure authenticity? Let’s be sure we don’t hijack such a precious remembrance by trying to promote ourselves off of it.

As a serious hobby historian who focuses on the history of slavery in America and the repair of the resulting family fractures, I am thankful for a careful and informed team.

Chatting with a friend during this past weekend, she asked if I’d take Juneteenth as a holiday (she works in a state government position). I explained that I’d be at work but reflecting (and writing this post). She explained that she’d be attending ‘the parade’.

Parade.

I wondered what that would be like – the parade. Celebratory? Commemorative? Solemn? Perhaps all three, which would likely be the most appropriate option.

Personally, I have trouble celebrating the end of slavery on Juneteenth because, well, Juneteenth didn’t legally end slavery (that happened 6 months later with the ratification of the 13th amendment). I also struggle with celebrating the end of something so atrocious – something that never should have happened. Imagine kidnapping someone, holding them in bondage, getting caught for the crime, being forced to free them, and having a holiday named for the day you finally HAD to end the lunacy.

That said, I’m okay with the fact that we have agreed on a date to commemorate those who were enslaved in the United States. If it advances the conversation, provides a reminder to reflect, and opens opportunity to explore, then it’s valuable.

The end of enslavement of humans in America deserves a holiday to recognize not only that day, but also to reflect on the entirety of the legacy of the centuries-long practice. When and how we do that may be debatable; That we do it, is not.

Clearly, America remains in great need of ways to sort out our complex history and find paths toward reconciling. Parades and picnics won’t do it. Progressive dialogue and access to information create impactf.

May today serve as an opportunity to start a conversation. I’m now invested in repairing ancestral family structure shattered by a system which dispersed families before and after emancipation.

Today, we have the benefit of genetic genealogy (DNA). In the days following emancipation, formerly enslaved people worked frantically to reconnect with loved ones.

Please take a few minutes to listen to one of my favorite podcasters on the topic. Rebecca Onion and Jamelle Bouie 's 11-part SLATE series ‘The History of American Slavery’ is a journey into America’s antebellum past. Hereto, I offer episode 9 – ‘How did American Slavery End’.

Please listen to the full 60 mins. If you are short on time, skip to the 30-minute mark and understand how families attempted to reconnect in the period after emancipation. My 2nd great grandfather, who had escaped slavery in 1848, ran such advertisements on behalf of others in the years after emancipation.

?History of American Slavery: What did the Emancipation Proclamation do? (slate.com)

Please know that this work continues today, we trace generations back to 19th and 18th century chattel slavery and then forward to current-day descendants who are JUST NOW learning who went where in their ancestry through a tangled web of erased identities, fractured families, #UndergroundRailroad requirements of name changing, etc.

I welcome your direct messages for more dialogue and opportunities to understand.?

#juneteenth2023 #juneteenth