Sunday, June 16, 2024
On June 19, 1865, slaves in Texas were told that they were free. This was a few months after the Civil War had come to an end. This union general, Granger, arrived to tell an enslaved people that they were now free. Apparently, news didn’t travel as fast in those days, especially when it was detrimental to those in power. So that information was slow-walked into Texas. The date became a national holiday 3 years ago, a well-deserved holiday, in my opinion. This day has always been the African Americans’ Independence Day, even before it was popular and celebrated as it is now.
When I look at black youths today, those that have strayed away from the pack, those who have been co-opted into violence and gangs and murder, I always wonder if they realize where they came from? I really believe that if they knew the trials and tribulations that their ancestors suffered, and the sacrifices they made for us, that they would be different, act differently with other brothers and sisters. I truly believe that.
Imagine being a newly freed person, lacking in skills and knowledge and basic understanding of living outside of the plantation system. Being on your own, but realizing that at the same time you would be treated differently. Imagine having to learn to read and write, and having a family that you’re responsible for. That you were a whole person, not half or quarter human, but 100%! That you have to stay with your family and be a dad, instead of the usual breeding machine you were molded into by your former masters, moving from one partner to another. You had to do all this and survive, against all the odds stacked up against you.
But, being the special people that we were and still are – maybe we are God’s chosen in a roundabout way – we thrived and survived. By the end of the 19th century we had rapidly advanced in many areas, even as the oppressors kept the proverbial boots on our necks. We became doctors and lawyers and teachers and politicians and inventors and investors in the future of a still racist country! The more they tried to hold us down, the more we wiggled and jiggled out of their grasp. In a short span of 40 years we were living in our own successful, if not wealthy communities, as in Tulsa Oklahoma, and we know how that ended. We invented peanut butter and medical devices; we changed the bland American cuisine into one with flavor and exotic varieties. We created our own music which evolved into jazz and rhythm and blues and eventually into rock and roll and hip hop! We created poetry in motion, from Langston Hughes to Jay Z. We became the conscience and the soul of a nation.
To this day we are still the vanguards of pop culture, music, and even the evolution of a new American language. We are the best athletes, hands down, dominant in every sport we are involved in! Our resilience, in spite of all the roadblocks, of all the hate, the injustices, the segregation, has carried us forward, undaunted in that quest to be better, to be better citizens, husbands, fathers! An ongoing process, one that has to be viewed optimistically, even as racism meanders through the underdeveloped minds of those who still think that they are superior to us, like you know who. What a ting!
I wish that the younger generations of people of color, understood the significance of Juneteenth, what it represents. Maybe then we could become better at understanding and caring and protecting each other, instead of perpetrating this unending genocidal terror on our own, especially our own!
We are a special people, not better, but different, from all the other special people and races on the planet. Juneteenth is a reminder, in my opinion, of why we should try to understand each other, settle our differences in more accommodating ways, as opposed to quick irresponsible actions we usually turn to, resulting in mayhem and senseless deaths! To value life and see it as a blessing, and not as a burden, again, even when the odds are stacked against you. That is how I see Juneteenth.
“Lift every voice and sing,
Till earth and heaven ring,
Ring with the harmonies of liberty…….”
Glen