A day for political action, prayer and celebration
Juneteenth has a special significance for all Americans this year.
After a tumultuous 2020 — from the racial reckoning ignited by the killing of George Floyd to the hundreds of thousands of Black Americans who died from COVID-19 — the day that slavery ended in the U.S. has taken on a sharper focus, with President Biden signing a bill Thursday making June 19 Juneteenth National Independence Day.
It’s always been a joyful celebration, evoking the jubilation that erupted when Maj. Gen. Gordon Granger read the order to 250,000 slaves in Galveston, Texas, on June 19, 1865, informing them that the Civil War was over.
But folded into that joy is an iron core.
“It remains a time for celebration and community, and for joy,” Prof. Matthew Delmont of Duke University told the Daily News. “Within African-American history, joy is a method of resistance and survival.”
America would do well to reflect on the day, said Delmont and University of Kentucky professor George Wright, an adviser to the White House on institutional diversity.
“Juneteenth provides a really excellent opportunity to reckon with our nation’s history and be honest about the good and bad aspects of American history,” Delmont said. “Especially when it comes to the decades-long struggles for African-American freedom.”
It means acknowledging “the end of slavery didn’t actually produce conditions of equality,” he added. “It’s also a time to poke around and ask, ‘Is this actually freedom that we’re living in? And if not, what more do we need to do?’”
The exultation that erupted when former slaves learned they’d been released from bondage came to be known as Juneteenth, a mashup of “June” and “nineteenth.” It was two years after President Abraham Lincoln’s Emancipation Proclamation, and two-plus months after the South’s surrender. Though just one of several such dates across various states, Juneteenth came to symbolize emancipation.
Yet last year, Black Americans were explaining why Black Lives Matter after the deaths of Floyd, Breonna Taylor, Rayshard Brooks, Atatiana Jefferson, Ahmaud Arbery and others.
The movement was largely brought to life by the police killing of Eric Garner, who was kept in an illegal chokehold even as he said at least 11 times, “I can’t breathe” in 2014 on Staten Island — dying words that became a rallying cry.
Though it started in Texas, Juneteenth celebrations spread across the U.S. as Blacks settled throughout the country, bringing the commemoration with them.
The day has always been celebrated with picnics, parades, cooking, baseball games — and in Galveston, barbecuing and rodeos are also part of the mix, according to Juneteenth.com. The day is often capped off with dancing, Wright said.
Its somber underpinnings give the day a serious side as well. The holiday also traditionally focuses on education and self-improvement, and prayer services play a role.
“So Juneteenth would be a very festive one – from the church activity that set the stage to always remember, to the political side of things to set the status quo,” Wright said. “Juneteenth reflects back on slavery and the struggles that people have made. So political activity has always been a part of Juneteenth.”
Wright said this year, political calls to action include voting rights.
“Whatever you call it, it’s about celebrating freedom both with joyfilled festivities, and with practice,” Delmont said. “Juneteenth really offered an opportunity for these communities to come together and talk honestly about what they had endured. They were celebrating, but it was also a really honest accounting that slavery may have been over, but they weren’t yet fully free.”