What is Juneteenth?

Imagine that the coronavirus pandemic continues for four hundred years. Imagine that during these 400 years, 4 million people were infected, and there was no cure. Imagine that finally, they found a cure for the virus. But the cure did not get to you until two and a half years later. Imagine the horror of that. But then, whatever it is you are imagining is nothing compared to what actually happened on June 19, 1865.

On January 1, 1863, President Abraham Lincoln had issued the official emancipation proclamation that declared all “slaves within any state, or designated part of a state…in rebellion,…shall be then, thenceforward, and forever free.”

 But then, America was at war with itself, so many Blacks were still under the oppression of slavery until two years later. In 1865, the American civil war, a war that was fought majorly to keep slavery alive, ended. This was two years after President Lincoln already declared that everyone was free.

Still, as of June 1865, some slaves were still being put to work on the plantations in the South. They did not know that they had been freed two and a half years ago. They did not even know that the war which was fought majorly over their freedom had ended six months before. These slaves were in Texas. The moment slave masters heard that the war was over and they had lost, most of them fled other parts of the South and settled in Texas with their slaves so they could continue oppressing them and keeping them as slaves. In Texas alone, there were about two hundred and fifty thousand slaves. That is more than the size of a country, Sao Tome and Principe, today.

On June 19, 1865, General Gordon Granger arrived at Galveston, an island on Texas gulf with the Union troops to occupy Texas and enforce the freedom which President Lincoln (who had by now been assassinated) had declared more than two years before. It was a difficult thing to do, and to ensure that there were no more slaves in Texas, General Gordon Granger and his men had to move from plantation to plantation and literally read out the official Emancipation Proclamation to them. General Gordon announced to them that they were already free, in fact, that they had been free for years and that the war was over.

To the 250 000 slaves in the fields of Texas, it was almost unbelievable. The dream of every slave is to be free, and these folks had been dreaming of this day since they were born. They had been dreaming of the day they would no longer be slaves, the day they would no longer be regarded as property. They were both shocked and happy to hear that they had actually been freed more than two years before.

Some slave masters wanted to keep their slaves. They promised to pay 40 dollars a month to the slaves to stay back and continue working on the plantations. None of the slaves stayed. They could not. It was not even an option. After hundreds of years of being held bound, the freedom to walk away, to walk away freely was much more important to them than anything. To them, June 19, 1865, was the most important day in their life. It was the day they ceased to be property. It was the day they became human.

In 1866, a year after, the freedmen of Texas organized the first celebration of what would become Juneteenth. They called it Jubilee Day. It was their day of liberation, of freedom.

Slavery was about domination, about control. Sadly, that desire, that potential to dominate the Black man, is still very much present in America today. It was that desire to suppress; it was what made that Minneapolis cop put a knee on the neck of George Floyd. You could never do that to a white man, no matter the crime he committed. But that desire to dominate was there; it was what killed George.

The celebration of Juneteenth, (the day Texas slaves discovered that they were free) in 2020 is even much more valid and essential due to the ongoing Black Lives Matter protests all over the world, the recent killing of George Floyd, and the police brutality to African Americans.

We will keep remembering June 19. We will keep celebrating Juneteenth. It is a reminder of the death of slavery – America’s original sin. June 19 is the celebration of freedom, of liberation.

Unfortunately, it is also a reminder of the oppression of slavery, of that unfortunate day in 1619, when the first Africans stepped on the shores of America and automatically became slaves. 

Picture Credit:

Picture 1 and 2: Google Images

Picture 3: Getty Images