In the car on Friday, my children asked me what Juneteenth meant.
I started by explaining the historical facts as I know them.
900 days after the signing of the Emancipation Proclamation January 1, 1863, Union
troops arrived in Galveston, TX at the end of the Civil War June 19th.
1865. Major General Gordon Granger read General Orders No. 3, which finally
informed the 250,000 enslaved people in Texas that they were free.
This moment did not immediately change the conditions for the
formerly enslaved, and many became sharecroppers for the former slave owners.
History Professor Erin Stewart Mauldin reminds, “Individuals had to fight for
every piece of freedom they experienced and the struggle for justice that
started long before the war did not end with emancipation.”
The moment, I remind myself, was my great-great grandfather’s
generation. Four generations before me. Not long ago.
I paused and checked in with my children.
Juneteenth is a moment to be honest about our country’s
history. Not to sugarcoat it, not to erase it, but to embrace the ugly, the
horrific parts of our country.
Juneteenth is a moment to re-commit ourselves to standing
with and for those being erased in this moment – peoples of color, LGBTQ+, women,
the poor. It is a reminder that shackles remain on too many in 2026.
Juneteenth is a moment to stand for science and the planet at
a moment when powerful voices tell us neither are worth standing up for.
Juneteenth is a moment where we can love our country and at
the same time be deeply disturbed over what our country has become and is
becoming.
Juneteenth begs for a patriotism that sees that while
slavery ended, our nation has never been emancipated from the racism that led
to slavery and the genocide of Indigenous peoples.
Juneteenth pleads for us not to celebrate our 250th
in blind, flag-waving, amnesia, singing “America the Beautiful” but rather to see
our country for the traumatized, flawed entity that it is. It asks us to
continue working for political and economic freedom for all peoples, driven by
a hope and belief that America can be beautiful yet.
Thank you for this. We need more of this - all the time. Honestly and fact based history lessons. “Not everything that is faced can be changed, but nothing can be changed until it is faced.” James Baldwin
ReplyDeleteThe Avett Brothers have a song "We Americans" it's a hard song that disusses some of what you touched on. It speaks of the complexity that is being American. Proud of ideals, but grounded in the reality of what was and what is, and how each of us has the ability to be better.
ReplyDeleteExcellent! Good reminders for all of us!!
ReplyDeleteI love this...it gives truth and hope that the past will not repeat itself. (Just a note....the years were 1863 and 1865 ❣).
ReplyDeleteThanks, Anthony! Right on point! Sharing a poem I got as part of an email from Sojourners on Juneteenth...
ReplyDeleteBury Me In A Free Land
Frances Ellen Watkins Harper
(1825-1911)
Make me a grave where’er you will,
In a lowly plain, or a lofty hill;
Make it among earth’s humblest graves,
But not in a land where men are slaves.
I could not rest if around my grave
I heard the steps of a trembling slave;
His shadow above my silent tomb
Would make it a place of fearful gloom.
I could not rest if I heard the tread
Of a coffle gang to the shambles led,
And the mother’s shriek of wild despair
Rise like a curse on the trembling air.
I could not sleep if I saw the lash
Drinking her blood at each fearful gash,
And I saw her babes torn from her breast,
Like trembling doves from their parent nest.
I’d shudder and start if I heard the bay
Of bloodhounds seizing their human prey,
And I heard the captive plead in vain
As they bound afresh his galling chain.
If I saw young girls from their mother’s arms
Bartered and sold for their youthful charms,
My eye would flash with a mournful flame,
My death-paled cheek grow red with shame.
I would sleep, dear friends, where bloated might
Can rob no man of his dearest right;
My rest shall be calm in any grave
Where none can call his brother a slave.
I ask no monument, proud and high,
To arrest the gaze of the passers-by;
All that my yearning spirit craves,
Is bury me not in a land of slaves.
Ahxe’hee shi tsili’ Anthony for speaking truth from hundreds of years ago to today’s pain and brutality from racism to the enduring hope and love for humanity. Especially for healing growth. This reflection reminds me
ReplyDeletewhen Shinaai Terry Sloan read this poem during one of the Tribal leadership housing justice summits…
Take a breath—
Feel the weight of centuries unravel in your lungs,
exhale the names of those who marched before you,
their songs still folded in your ribcage,
their prayers rising from the marrow of your bones.
Yes, the storm lingers,
the sky heavy with its old familiar ache,
but we are not strangers to rain.
We’ve danced beneath it,
planted seeds in the wet earth,
and watched fields bloom despite the odds.
Take another breath.
This moment is not the mountain’s summit,
but neither is it the valley’s depth.
We stand in the in-between,
a place our ancestors knew well—
between freedom and chains,
between hope and despair,
between a dream deferred
and a dream reborn.
Remember, progress is a slow and stubborn river.
It carves through stone,
not in haste, but with steady persistence.
And though some cling to the crumbling edges
of their outdated beliefs,
we will keep building bridges,
even as they try to burn them.
Breathe again.
Healing comes in waves—
first the grief, then the fire.
Let us honor the hands that lifted,
the backs that bent,
the voices that refused silence.
Let us mourn,
but let us also prepare for the work ahead.
Justice is not a gift; it’s a battle.
And though it may seem distant,
though the road is jagged,
we’ve never been afraid to climb.
So we rise,
with fists clenched and hearts tender,
with love as our compass and rage as our fuel.
Take one last deep breath,
then lace up your boots.
The march is long,
the night is cold,
but together,
we will carry this light
until the dawn meets us halfway.
- a poem by Dr. Mustafa Santiago Ali