Last year I enthusiastically joined the celebration of Juneteenth as a new National holiday. Today, I have mixed feelings. Why? Because June 19th wasn’t the end of slavery in America.
Is the new National holiday merely more support for the myth of the narrative that rewrites our history to the benefit an oppressive political machine?
Let’s consider relevant facts and important dates.
April 18, 1846 “New Jersey enacted a law which bound enslaved Black people to indefinite servitude as ‘apprentices for life’ to work at the will of their white enslavers.”1
April 12, 1861 Civil War began.
April 16, 1862 Lincoln signed the Compensated Emancipation Act, “"It provided for immediate emancipation, compensation to former owners who were loyal to the Union of up to $300 for each freed slave, voluntary colonization of former slaves to locations outside the United States, and payments of up to $100 for each person choosing emigration. … for the freedom of 2,989 former slaves.”2
Our Nation’s capital celebrates emancipation on April 16 (which is why taxes weren’t due until April 18th this year).
July 12, 1862 “Congress passed a supplemental bill to the original DC Emancipation Act which covered another type of claim, allowing slaves whose masters had not filed for compensation to do so.”3 (This was a solid step towards equality, actually compensating the newly liberated for their enslavement rather than their ex-owners.)
September 22, 1862 Lincoln issued a preliminary emancipation proclamation.
January 1, 1863 The Emancipation Proclamation “freed all enslaved people in the rebellious states after January 1, 1863. He justified his decision as a wartime measure, and did not go so far as to free the enslaved people in the border states loyal to the Union.”4
Can you see how meaningless this was? The proclamation explicitly EXCLUDED those enslaved in areas under Union control.5
August 8, 1863 Andrew Johnson liberated his personal slaves, including Sam Johnson.6 On the same date in 1871, organized by Sam Johnson, Tennessee established the first Emancipation Day celebration.7
October 24, 1864 Andrew Johnson, as Military Governor of Tennessee, liberated Tennessee’s slaves8
By this act, Andrew Johnson liberated more slaves than Lincoln.9
April 9, 1865 With the Union victory at Appomattix, the Civil War ended.
June 19, 1865 Word reached Galveston, Texas; the war is over. Texas slaves were liberated.
December 18, 1865 13th Amendment ratified.
But, that wasn’t the end of slavery. Remember New Jersey, as an example:
“In 1830, of the 3,568 Northern blacks who remained slaves, more than two-thirds were in New Jersey. … At the start of the Civil War, New Jersey citizens owned 18 "apprentices for life" (the federal census listed them as "slaves") -- legal slaves by any name.”10
"New Jersey's emancipation law carefully protected existing property rights. No one lost a single slave, and the right to the services of young Negroes was fully protected."11
January 23, 1866 New Jersey finally ratifies the 13th amendment (1st rejecting the amendment on March 16, 1865)12
New Jersey’s “end of slavery” wasn’t freedom for slaves, but conversion to lifelong servitude.
To-may-toh/To-mah-toh? Or, perhaps a reflection of the hypocricy and double-standards that undermine peace?
I’m hoping we can find a path that leads to healing. I’m hoping we can honor our past while embracing a brighter future.
Disregarding the complicated unwinding of a socioeconomic institution such as chattel slavery, distilling the muddy end it into a single day that only represents one state’s emancipation, seems like a disservice.
December 18th, honoring the National adoption of a majority attitude toward human rights and freedoms, would seem a better day for our country’s celebration. Was this even a consideration? Isn’t this a more appropriate reflection of democracy at work?
Sadly, most American’s don’t know our history. I didn’t, until recently.
I suppose June 19th is as good a day as any, if the end result is unification. Tennessee celebrates Sam Johnson’s day of liberation, not the day freedom was given to the rest of the state’s enslaved.
So, Juneteenth it is. Happy Independence Day!
Let’s do this!
“Louisiana, (except the Parishes of St. Bernard, Plaquemines, Jefferson, St. John, St. Charles, St. James Ascension, Assumption, Terrebonne, Lafourche, St. Mary, St. Martin, and Orleans, including the City of New Orleans)” … and Virginia, (except the forty-eight counties designated as West Virginia, and also the counties of Berkley, Accomac, Northampton, Elizabeth City, York, Princess Ann, and Norfolk, including the cities of Norfolk and Portsmouth[)], and which excepted parts, are for the present, left precisely as if this proclamation were not issued.
Black Bondage in the North, by Edgar J. McManus