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Happy Juneteenth! And please don’t dismiss or deride it as some sort of liberal latecomer to the list of national holidays.
A Tuesday editorial in the LA Times put it as well as we could, so we happily offer a direct quote:
“Juneteenth is no more a holiday just for Black people than the Fourth of July is a holiday just for white people. It recognizes and celebrates a profound milestone in American history — the declaration of freedom for an entire race of American people who had been held in bondage for centuries.”
The date of June 19th was chosen because, in 1865, Union Army Major Gen. Gordon Granger arrived in Galveston, Texas with General Order No. 3, and we feel that is worth quoting in full as well. While historically important, it was succinct:
“The people 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, become that between employer and hired labor. The freed are advised to remain at their present homes, and work for wages. They are informed that they will not be allowed to collect at military posts; and that they will not be supported in idleness either there or elsewhere.”
Reading the order in it’s entirety is pretty important. As stirring as the first and second sentences are, the two after that served almost as prophecy. As the National Archives website (archives.gov) puts it: “The racist language used in the last sentences foreshadowed that the fight for equal rights would continue.”
To put June 19, 1865 in perspective, a brief calendar of events: President Abraham Lincoln issued the “Emancipation Proclamation” Jan. 1, 1863 as the Civil War approached its third year, but plenty of Confederate states ignored it. Robert E. Lee surrendered in Virginia to Ulysses S. Grant in April of 1865, but confederate troops further south and west continued to fight. The 13th amendment to the U.S. Constitution abolishing Slavery was ratified in December 1865.
Between Lee’s surrender and June 19, word of the end of the war, and of slavery, seeped through the south. Slaves in Texas were the last ones in the Confederate States to learn they were free, and even after Gen. Granger’s arrival, the news took time to filter across such a big state. Not surprisingly, some slave owners ignored General Order No. 3, practically daring someone to enforce it.
Arguably, Texas made up for the sluggishness of 1865 by being the first state to declare Juneteenth a state holiday in 19. Since then, it has become an official holiday in 24 other states and the District of Columbia. On June 17, 2021, President Joe Biden signing the bill that made it a federal holiday.
It deserved that status for a few very big reasons. While we rightly celebrate July 4 as national Independence Day, it simply wasn’t true freedom from tyranny for many of those living in the new nation. Juneteenth marks the day every American was deemed, at least by the law, free and equal.
And as painful as everything leading up to that moment was, and how deeply entrenched racism remained (and remains) in the country afterward, Juneteenth demonstrates the country’s ability to evolve, the value of resilience, fortitude and persistence against inequity, and the optimism baked into a country forged and re-forged by people seeking a better life.
Yes, it’s about freedom of slaves. But it’s that first part that makes this holiday so universal to all of us: Freedom.