Independence Day for blacks
“O say, does that star-spangled banner yet wave
O’er the land of the free and the home of the brave?”
Are we at a point of seriously considering the answer to that most important question in 2018? Is there a section of America that is not aware that the Civil War ended in 1865, and do we really have to fight the war all over again? And don’t forget that America lost 620,000 people during the Civil War. The last group of slaves was made aware of their freedom in Texas and in other places during the same year the Civil War ended.
Republican President Abraham Lincoln got word in 1865 that slaves in Texas, especially the Galveston section, had not been freed and were unaware that the Emancipation Proclamation had been signed two years earlier. Later, when the government officials were questioned about the whys and the wherefores of that truth, several reasons were given. Often told is the story of a messenger who was murdered on his way to Texas with the news of freedom. Another is that the news was deliberately withheld by the enslavers to maintain the labor force on the plantations. And still another is that federal troops actually waited for the slave owners to reap the benefits of one last cotton harvest before going to Texas to enforce the Emancipation Proclamation. All — or none — of these versions could be true. Certainly for some, President Lincoln’s authority over the rebellious states was in question. For whatever the reasons, conditions in Texas remained status quo for two more years after 1863.
President Lincoln dispatched General Granger to Texas escorted by 2,000 troops to deliver General Order No. 3. One of General Granger’s first orders of business was to read General Order No. 3 to the people of Texas, which began most significantly with, “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.”
The above message was delivered on June 19, 1865. June is known as the month of freedom for African Americans. The state of Texas is widely considered the first U.S. state to begin Juneteenth Celebrations with informal observances taking place for over a century, and June 19 has been an official state holiday since 1980 in Texas. This is only reasonable, because it was in Texas that thousands of slaves got word that they were free in 1865 despite the Emancipation Proclamation being officially signed Sept. 22, 1962 by then President Lincoln and the order being given on Jan. 1, 1963.
Now in 2018, we seem to be back on the threshold of one of the greatest divides ever. Many of the slaveholders were kinder to the people of color than the exchange that is taking place today. Until the hearts of the people in our country are changed I am afraid it will only get worse. Can you, as U.S. Rep. Tom Graves stated in 2013, “Imagine the hope that filled every enslaved man, woman and child as news of President Lincoln’s Emancipation Proclamation, and later the 13th Amendment, slowly spread from town to town. Think of the number of prayers, whispered throughout so much hardship, that were finally answered. Freedom was forever redefined in America that day.”
“Before we will arrive at the day when we can live in peace without hate,” as was quoted by Ken Fuller, “We must become intentional people who consciously make decisions to be inclusive in our personal lives, at our work, in our homes, and in our places of worship.”
The mere passage of time alone will not do it as “Change does not roll in on the wheels of inevitability, but comes through the continuous struggle (of man),” exhorted Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.
People should never take their freedom for granted because if they do, it may get lost, or it may stray, or it may get stolen, and they will end up fighting for it a second or third time.
Willie Mae Samuel is a playwright and a director in Rome.