Today is June 19: Juneteenth, the day that the Emancipation Proclamation was finally enforced in the furthest reaches of the confederacy, some two and a half years after Abraham Lincoln issued an executive order freeing American slaves.
It's an important commemoration in American history, and a great excuse to eat really good barbeque. It ought to be a national holiday.
There are various theories and narratives as to why it took two and a half years - from January 1, 1963 until June 19, 1965 - after the Emancipation Proclamation for slaves to finally be freed in Texas. One story says a messenger carrying news of freedom was murdered on his way to Texas. Another story says that slaveholders deliberately withheld the news from their workforce, which would have been easy enough to do. Another says federal troops delayed bringing the news to allow plantation owners one last harvest before setting the harvestors loose.
Whatever the reasons for the delay, it was on this day 147 years ago that a regiment of Union soldiers under the command of Major General Gordon Granger finally arrived in Galveston, Texas and Granger read the following edict:
"The people of Texas are informed that in accordance with a Proclamation from the Executive of the United States, all slaves are free. This involves an absolute equality of rights and rights of property between former masters and slaves, and the connection heretofore existing between them becomes that between employer and free laborer."
As black slaves received the news, they were shocked and jubilant, and many ditched the plantations without delay. Quickly, annual Juneteenth celebrations came together, as people put on their finest clothes (after generally being permitted to wear nothing but rags while enslaved), drank strawberry soda, and gathered round barbeque pits to eat lamb and beef and pork and other special foods not typically enjoyed the rest of the year. Baseball and fishing and rodeos were also common parts of Juneteenth festivities.
You guys: all of these things are awesome. We should doing this every year, as a nation. Freedom! Baseball! Barbecue! Fishing! Rodeo! If this were any more American I think Al Qaeda would just faint dead away.
Texas Senator Kay Bailey Hutchison introduced legislation today that would make Juneteenth a National Day of Observance, similar to Flag Day or Patriot Day. And that's a good start, but I'd rather have the whole damn day off every year so that I could celebrate the hell out of it. Furthermore, we already have Martin Luther King Day as a celebration for the African-American struggle for freedom, but that holiday focused on one man, which minimizes the collective struggle of all black Americans for dignity and freedom.
Juneteenth celebrations declined in the early 1900s as African Americans began to embrace the 4th of July as an alternative patriotic holiday, as blacks moved away from rural areas and the great depression hit. Juneteenth saw a come back with the rise of the Civil Rights Movement mid-century, and today is celebrated with parades and community barbecues and educational events across the country.
The end of slavery was probably the greatest thing that ever happened to the United States of America. Not far behind are barbecue and baseball. So let's make this thing happen, you guys. For America. For all of us.
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