Juneteenth and Slavery: Facts matter
23rd June 2020 · 0 Comments
Like other Black-owned institutions, The Louisiana Weekly believes that Juneteenth is a day to celebrate the emancipation of enslaved African Americans. However, we view Juneteenth through the lens of our mission to educate and promulgate the truth of such seminal moments in Black history. To that end, facts matter.
We are happy to hear that many American corporations that, in a moment of their own education and discovery of the commemoration, have come aboard to join in celebrating Juneteenth by giving employees a day off or half-day off, as a way of finally recognizing a seminal period in the history of enslaved people.
But if most of the people in the nation are adhering to news reports describing Juneteenth as a celebration of the official end of slavery, they are being unintentionally misguided.
It is a fact that slavery had been abolished (in certain parts of certain states) two years earlier by Lincoln’s Emancipation Proclamation on January 1, 1863. However, slaves in Texas were not freed until Union Army Maj. Gen. Gordon Granger issued orders to free enslaved people in Texas on June 19, 1865.
As such, Juneteenth is an unofficial American holiday and an official Texas state holiday, that is celebrated annually on the 19th of June in the United States to commemorate Granger’s reading of federal emancipation orders in the city of Galveston, Texas.
Facts matter.
Trump’s assertion that “I did something good: I made Juneteenth very famous,” because “nobody had ever heard of it,” is totally untrue. Aside from being an official holiday in Texas, the first Juneteenth celebration was held in Texas in 1866 and spread nationwide in the ensuing decades.
Trump commented on Juneteenth after he was caught red-handed trying to throw red meat to his base by holding a rally on Juneteenth in Tulsa, Oklahoma, during the same month in 1921 that the Tulsa race massacre took place, when mobs of white residents attacked Black residents and businesses of the Greenwood District in Tulsa, Oklahoma. It has been called “the single worst incident of racial violence in American history.”
And maybe as we celebrate Juneteenth, we should review our emancipator’s words before he signed the Emancipation Proclamation in 1863:
In August 1862, President Abraham Lincoln stated: “If I could save the union without freeing any slaves I would do it; and if I could save it by freeing all the slaves I would do it; and if I could save it by freeing some and leaving others alone I would also do that.”
When Lincoln issued his executive order on January 1, 1863, he did not free all of the slaves, although he did free some slaves in certain parts of the Confederate states:
Now, therefore I, Abraham Lincoln, President of the United States, by virtue of the power in me vested as Commander-in-Chief, of the Army and Navy of the United States in time of actual armed rebellion against the authority and government of the United States, and as a fit and necessary war measure for suppressing said rebellion, do, on this first day of January, in the year of our Lord one thousand eight hundred and sixty-three, and in accordance with my purpose so to do publicly proclaimed for the full period of one hundred days, from the day first above mentioned, order and designate as the States and parts of States wherein the people thereof respectively, are this day in rebellion against the United States, the following, to wit:
Arkansas, Texas, 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) Mississippi, Alabama, Florida, Georgia, South Carolina, North Carolina, 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.
And by virtue of the power, and for the purpose aforesaid, I do order and declare that all persons held as slaves within said designated States, and parts of States, are, and henceforward shall be free….
Although Lincoln struggled with his decision to emancipate our enslaved ancestors, today we honor and commemorate him for doing the right thing for this nation and our people. We also recognize the huge debt he paid for our liberation. He lost his life for abolishing slavery.
Which brings us to the truth and facts about some slaveholders and whether some of them deserve redemption.
Recently, the statue of John McDonogh in New Orleans was debased and thrown in the Mississippi River. It is a fact that John McDonogh was a slave owner. But as a member of the American Colonization Society, it is also a fact that he organized transportation for freed people of color to Liberia, he allowed his slaves to purchase their freedom and in his will, he provided large grants for the public education of children of poor whites and freed people of color in New Orleans and Baltimore. By the 1970s, some 20 schools in the New Orleans public school system were named for him.
Many Black New Orleanians who attended schools named for McDonogh are proud graduates and have stood up for retaining the school’s legacy and name; especially those of McDonogh #35. Mac35 has a storied reputation of providing the best secondary education in New Orleans.
If we are to castigate and destroy memorials to redeemable benefactors like John McDonogh, what should we do about the free people of color who owned slaves?
“By 1830 slave ownership had become widespread among free blacks in Louisiana. In New Orleans, 753 free persons of color were members of the slaveholding class, including twenty-five who owned at least ten bondsmen and women, and 126 who owned between five and ten slaves,” according to SlaveryFacts.org.
Mother Henriette Delille, the founder of the Sisters of the Holy Family owned a slave. Her name was Betsy. Henriette freed her in her will when she died in 1862. Many African Americans are descendants of free people of color that owned slaves. Today, the Venerable Mother Delille is two steps away from sainthood which she is so deserving.
Now there are some slave owners who are honored with statues that should not be venerated or honored. Especially, those who fought and led the Confederacy in the effort to overthrow the U.S. government to preserve slavery.
One such person from Louisiana, who is honored with a life-sized statute that stands today is U.S. Supreme Court Justice Edward Douglass White Jr. His statue stands in a place of honor in front of the Louisiana State Supreme Court building on Royal Street.
White fought in the Confederacy, at the Battle of Liberty Place, to take down the Reconstruction government, and he is a self-described member of the KKK. His father was a Louisiana Governor who owned a plantation and slaves. The Ninth Chief Justice of the U.S. Supreme Court, White was on the U.S. Supreme Court and voted to affirm the Plessy v. Ferguson “separate but equal doctrine that ushered in 50 years of American apartheid (legal segregation).
Our point is that forgiveness and redemption has been earned, factually, by some who owned slaves, while others who, then and now, support the stars and bars and do not deserve places of honor in public places.
Our hope is that we learn, from history, the distinction between those who earned redemption through their deeds, and those who did not.
This article originally published in the June 22, 2020 print edition of The Louisiana Weekly newspaper.
