Juneteenth Independence Day: A celebration for all reasons
10th June 2024 · 0 Comments
June 19, 2024, marks the 159th anniversary of the Union Army’s Maj. General Gordon Granger’s reading of General Orders No. 3: “The people of Texas are informed that, in accordance with a proclamation from the Executive of the United States, all slaves are free.”
According to the Congressional Research Service, in 1866, freedmen and women in Texas celebrated “Juneteenth” with authentic African-American cultural traditions: parades, cookouts, prayer gatherings, historical and cultural readings, and musical performances.
Juneteenth is also called Emancipation Day, Freedom Day, Black Independence Day and Juneteenth Independence Day.
It would take 156 years and many congressional resolutions and federal legislation before the first official movement to make Juneteenth a federal holiday began in 1994, and the first congressional resolution recognizing Juneteenth Independence Day was introduced in the 105th Congress in 1997.
President Joseph R. Biden signed the bill, shepherded by Congresswoman Shelia Jackson Lee, making Juneteenth an official federal holiday in 2021. Jackson Lee was persistent in continuously introducing resolutions and bills. Jackson Lee is also continuing to file HR 40, the Reparations bill.
“There needs to be a reckoning, an effort to unify. One thing about national holidays, they help educate people about what the story is,” Jackson Lee told Time magazine in 2020.
“Juneteenth legislation is a call for freedom, but it also reinforces the history of African Americans. We’ve fought for this country. We’ve made great strides, but we’re still the victims of sharp disparities. Our neighborhoods reflect that. We’ve been denied the same opportunities for housing, access to healthcare and, in 2020, [during] COVID-19, all of the glaring disparities are shown. Because of that, I think this is a time that we may find people who are desirous to understand the history not necessarily only of African Americans, but the history of America.”
Jackson Lee spoke about what African Americans have experienced in the U.S. since the end of slavery.
Texas was the first state to declare Juneteenth a state holiday. Louisiana didn’t make the day a state holiday until 2003.
The Reverend John Mosley and several of his colleagues were motivated to do something in the wake of the Rodney King beating by police and the mistreatment of Black people in general. They held the first commemoration of Juneteenth in New Orleans in 1991.
Juneteenth remains a day of celebration but also a day to unify and organize around issues that affect Black Americans.
However, the last few sentences of General Order No. 3 compel us to remember the same racialized mindset that seeped through the so-called “freedom” order still exists in the hearts and minds of some of today’s leaders:
“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 personal rights and rights of property between former masters and slaves, and the connection heretofore existing between them becomes that between employer and hired labor. The freedmen are advised to remain quietly at their present homes and work for wages. They are informed that they will not be allowed to collect at military posts and that they will not be supported in idleness either there or elsewhere.”
“While the order was critical to expanding freedom to enslaved people, the racist language used in the last sentences foreshadowed that the fight for equal rights would continue,” The National Archives reports.
We must remember President Abraham Lincoln’s Emancipation Proclamation of January 1, 1863, which designated that only freed persons held as slaves within the rebellious states “are, and henceforward shall be free.” Sounds good, huh?
But it applied only to states that had seceded from the United States, leaving slavery untouched in the loyal border states. It also expressly exempted parts of the Confederacy (the Southern secessionist states) that had already come under Northern control.
That included the following parishes in 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 which excepted parts, are for the present, left precisely as if this proclamation were not issued.”
As we prepare to party like 1866, we should remember Reverend Mosley’s comments to Time magazine in 2020:
“We wanted to use Juneteenth to call attention to the world that things are not right, and Black people are people too, and we want equal treatment for being people too,” Mosley says. “It was not just to have a party and have a good time. It’s a rallying cry for us.”
Since President Biden made Juneteenth an official holiday, more and more celebrations are being held around Louisiana.
New Orleanians can celebrate African-American dance, food, music and performance traditions at various Juneteenth events. There are health-related activities, including yoga, the Fit Festival and the Women’s Wellness Workshop; concerts by Tremé for Tremé Cultural and Historical Black Music Series, the Zulu and The Angola Theatrical Reading (at 1030 Elysian Fields), the Juneteenth Freedom Gala, the Third Annual Afro Freedom Afro Feast Juneteenth Celebration; and the Creole Queen’s Juneteenth. To learn about more Juneteenth events, visit AllEvents.com.
This article originally published in the June 10, 2024 print edition of The Louisiana Weekly newspaper.
