James Frances Jr. leads the Emancipation Trail Ride in 2002 in Galveston, Texas. Riders traveled a mile for each of the 137 years since the Emancipation Proclamation was read in Galveston. (AP Photo/The Galveston County Daily News, Kevin Bartram)
by Mark Silva
July Fourth may be on its way, but "Juneteenth'' is here today.
This is the day, in 1865, that Union soldiers sailed into Galveston, Tex., and announced the end of the Civil War with the reading of a general order freeing one quarter of a million slaves living in Texas.
The Emancipation Proclamation may already have gone into effect on January 1863, but slavery persisted. Just as legally sanctioned racial discrimination persisted well into the 20th Century.
June 19th has become a day of celebration in its own right - "a time of celebration, but also a time of reflection, healing, and hopefully a time for the country to come together and deal with its slave legacy,'' says the Rev. Ronald Meyers, chairman of the National Juneteenth Observance Foundation.
He has worked for years to get the day recognized by state Legislatures - with more than half the states now acknowledging it in some fashion or another, some with holidays the third Saturday of June.
Only one state celebrates it as a legal holiday: Texas.
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Comments
Actually, January 1st should be celebrated as emancipation day by the entire nation. Why it isn't can be attributed to the absence of a sense of history of that occasion. January 1st is celebrated by everyone as just the beginning of a new year, but it should also be celebrated more meaningfully as Emancipation Day. Juneteenth would seem almost anticlimatic were it not for the reality that for those people in Texas they were cheated out of 5 months of freedom.
Posted by: GW | June 19, 2008 1:38 PM
The Emancipation Proclamation did not end slavery as an institution, and didn't even purport to do so. It was an executive order, undertaken pursuant to President Lincoln's war powers, in order to suppress the rebellion where it existed in any State or any part not then under federal control. That means it had no operation in a number of named counties and parishes in Louisiana and Virginia, the State of Tennessee which had already been captured, as well as the border states of Delaware, Maryland, Kentucky and Missouri - which were slave-states that hadn't rebelled. In theory, the Emancipation Proclamation would have ceased to have any operative effect at the end of the Civil War because there would no longer have been any States "in rebellion." That being the case, the deicision in Dred Scott v. Sanford would have provided legal grounds to maintain the institution of slavery when the war ended.
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The bottom line is that the Emancipation Proclamation was a wonderful effort toward freeing people, but it did not live up to its popular understanding. Slavery ended (sort of) only with ratification of the Thirteenth Amendment in December of 1865. Texas didn't ratify the Thirteenth Amendment until 1870, in which case the State has little reason to celebrate for the events of June, 1865.
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One last thing: Slavery is still with us. The Thirteenth Amendment excepted slavery or involuntary servitude from its operation where it is imposed as a punishment for crime upon conviction. With the largest per capita prison population in the world, we have many slaves in prison printing license plates, or sewing clothing, or doing any number of things private industries have contracted with the States to have them do. It is still slavery because the State owns the labor of these workers, and the workers are not given the compensation paid by the contracting businesses.
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So, do you still feel all warm and fuzzy inside about this stuff?
Posted by: John W. | June 19, 2008 1:47 PM
Actually, Union soldiers did NOT "sail" into "Galveston, Tex." on June 19th, 1865.
Soldiers don't "sail"--ships do. The soldiers were on steamers, not sailboats. And the ships the soldiers were on steamed into Galveston Harbor, NOT "Galveston, Tex.". The ships could not have entered the city itself.
Posted by: Bruce | June 19, 2008 4:55 PM
RNC Bruce,
Congratulations! You pegged the quibble-o-meter!
Posted by: Doug "Hussein" Zook | June 19, 2008 6:31 PM
More enlightenment from a person who changed his middle name to "Hussein". Instead of making personal attacks on people insisting on accuracy, shouldn't you criticize the reporter for inaccuracy?
Posted by: Bruce | June 19, 2008 11:40 PM
We honor our ancestors, Americans of African descent, who heard the news of freedom on the "19th of June", 1865, and celebrated in the streets of Galveston, Texas. "None are free, until all are free!" Juneteenth is the celebration of the end of slavery in America that we have designated as African-Americans.
Juneteenth is America's 2nd Independence Day celebration. 29 states recognize Juneteenth as a state holiday or state holiday observance, as well as the District of Columbia and the Congress of the United States.
Together we will see Juneteenth become a national holiday in America!
"DOC"
Rev. Ronald V. Myers, Sr., M.D.
Chairman
National Juneteenth Holiday Campaign
National Juneteenth Observance Foundation (NJOF)
National Juneteenth Christian Leadership Council (NJCLC)
www.Juneteenth.us
www.19thofJune.com
www.njclc.com
www.JuneteenthJazz.com
Posted by: Rev. Ronald V. Myers, Sr., M.D. | June 21, 2008 6:44 AM
General Granger did not announce the end of the War of the Rebellion on 19 June 1865 at Galveston Texas (the war did not end in that state until 20 August 1866.) His coming with enough brave hearts and bayonets to make Emancipation stick was the significance of that glorious event.
The legal date of the end of slavery in the designated rebellious areas of the country was 1 January 1863. But on that cold New Year’s day, Federal land and sea forces were locked in a bloody fight against fearful odds as the rebs attacked and re-took Galveston to prevent enforcement of they called “that hateful proclamation.”
G.E.H.
Posted by: G. Edward Hargis | June 25, 2008 4:35 PM