June 19, 2020
Happy Juneteenth!
You may (or may not) be wondering why we celebrate a holiday called Juneteenth. On January 1, in 1863 President Lincoln issued the Emancipation Proclamation. Two long years later, on June 19, 1865, the news reached enslaved African Americans in Galveston, Texas. Texas was one of the last strongholds of slavery in the United States. The holiday commemorates the official end of slavery.
It wasn’t until the 20th century in which the holiday became widely celebrated among Black people. In lieu of the recent protest of police brutality, systemic racism, social and human rights issues, companies such as Twitter, Nike, NFL and even the state of New York and Virginia have made announcements to make Juneteenth a paid holiday.
Now- many believe this is an attempt to be on the good end of the movement, and do the bare minimum at helping Black people fight for justice and equality, while others believe that this is a step in the right direction. However you feel, if the holiday is going to be celebrated, it should be done so with good intent, and an accurate amount of knowledge, and understanding of African American history.
Reported on The New York Times, “Juneteenth may mark just one moment in the struggle for emancipation, but the holiday gives us an occasion to reflect on the profound contributions of enslaved black Americans to the cause of human freedom. It gives us another way to recognize the central place of slavery and its demise in our national story.” However, it was a day of short-lived jubilation, according to a statement by Dr. Gail C. Christopher, executive director of the National Collaborative for Health Equity and Senior Scholar at the Center for Advancement of Well-Being at George Mason University.
Today, the Juneteenth holiday should be a source of inspiration for all people in America. Commemorating this day will help us all breathe by inspiring us to see and to eliminate the lasting, until now, seemingly permanent, permission to devalue other human beings, especially black and brown people.
It is too late for George Floyd, Eric Garner, Ahmad Arbry, Breana Taylor, Sandra Bland and countless others. The list of black lives and bodies sacrificed to both build this country and enable it to continue imposing an unjust racial hierarchy that values one group over another because of skin color is overwhelming.< While Juneteenth, 2020 is garnering more attention than ever before within an amazingly vast chorus affirming that Black Lives Matter, it is helpful to revisit how little black lives mattered at the time of their emancipation. Freed people seeking refuge in Union Army camps during and after the Civil War, found nothing of the kind. Often starving and exposed to the infectious diseases rampant in war time encampments, freedmen, women and children experienced the continued trauma of hatred at worst and disregard at best. In his book, Sick From Freedom, author, Jim Downs, documents the pain, suffering and needless deaths of freed people during Civil War and Reconstruction years. Using authentic narratives and medical records from the Archives of the Freedman's Bureau, Downs opens our hearts to the plights and resilient humanity of our ancestors. He exposes the fault lines of a nascent public health and medical system steeped in racism, and totally unprepared and unwilling to care for them. When smallpox broke out in 1862, Downs explained how military and federal officials in the North followed health protocols to stop the spread of the virus among the soldiers but justified the outbreak among free people as a "natural outcome" of emancipation. "The outbreak reinforced theories that the newly freed black people were on the verge of extinction, providing little incentive for federal agents to try to stop the spread of the disease," Downs wrote. "Additionally, even when various doctors and federal officials rejected that theory and committed themselves to stopping the spread of the virus, the massive dislocation created by emancipation thwarted their efforts. Smallpox spread among the former slaves and in the armies that moved throughout the South." As we continue to fight for equality AND freedom- today we honor, celebrate, and remember the ones who came before us. Happy Freedom Day, the fight continues. Read more at Hot97.com
