On this day in 1865, US Army Major General Granger posted a notice in Galveston, Texas that slavery in Texas and the rest of the country that was in rebellion on January 1, 1863, were now and forever free. While the formal end of slavery occurred on December 6, 1865 when the 13th Amendment was ratified, the overwhelming majority of slaves fell under the Emancipation Proclamation, and we rightly celebrate Juneteenth, when Granger’s notice signified the end of our nation’s Original Sin.
Most Black Americans’ families were in the 13 colonies and the newly created United States before the abolition of the international slave trade in 1808. Speaking countless different languages, separated forever from family, village and nation, forced to learn a new language, culture and religion while working under the severest conditions, Black Americans forged a new culture while enduring trans-Atlantic hell in their journey to America, and enduring the lash and the ultimate heartbreak of having your family broken up and sold for profit.
If anyone other than Native Americans could be said to have a uniquely American culture, it would be Black Americans. White settlers and their descendants could write or visit their old-world families and lands. They could bring their relatives over to America. They could settle in enclaves within cities where they spoke Italian, French, and whole regions of ‘Pennsylvania Dutch’ spoke German, especially in my mother’s home state, Pennsylvania.
Europeans could acclimate as rapidly or slowly as they wanted to the British-based US culture, living in their ethnic enclaves in cities. Black Americans in the colonial and US national period could do none of these gradual cultural adaptations.
Today, some in the US feel the only ‘real Americans’ are white Christians (and they have doubt about Catholics), while their own families likely came to the US in the late 1800s, or 1900s. Most Black Americans’ ancestors were here 100 to 150 years before the people denying them their status as ‘True Americans.’
We must thank, in part, Robert E. Lee for prolonging the Civil War long enough for it to turn from a war to save the Union into a war to eradicate once and for all the plague of slavery. Although slavery de jure did not end until December 6th, its de facto end is rightly celebrated on Juneteenth, just after the Confederate forces in Texas surrendered.
When we finally realize that skin color is no more determinative of character, ability or literally ANYTHING, then is our eye or hair color, or the color of our clothing, then we will finally escape the poison that permeates, today as well as yesterday, our beloved land.
Happy Juneteenth.
Free at last, free at last. God Almighty, free at last.
Start Where You Stand 