Dwain Northey (Gen X)

The origins of Juneteenth date back to June 19, 1865, when Maj. Gen. Gordon Granger, a U.S. Army officer and Union General during the Civil War, issued an order in Galveston, Texas, announcing that all slaves were free under the Emancipation Proclamation. The Civil War ended in Spring, 1865. Robert E. Lee surrendered the last major Confederate army to Ulysses S. Grant at Appomattox Courthouse on April 9, 1865.

I completely understand the information delivery system in the 1860’s was antiquated as compared to modern day, but they did have the telegraph before the civil war so why did it take 40 days after Lee’s surrender for all slaves to be told that they were free.

In retrospect Washington ended hostilities ending the war for independence on April 18, 1783, and the proclamation of the end of the war was widely recognized by April 23, 1783. So, the news that the war for our independence ended, nearly 100 years prior to the end of the Civil War and with the telegraph system, was disseminated in 4 days but the totality of slaves did not know they were free for 40 days. That would seem comical if we didn’t understand the historical president that this fact obviously fits into.

In June of 2021, Congress passed a resolution Congressman Cohen co-sponsored to establish the federal holiday. President Biden signed it into law on June 17, 2021, and Juneteenth was first celebrated as a federal holiday the next day. It took the remaining slaves 40 days to know they were free and 156 years for the country to recognize this as a historical event. I loved history in school and have read about every period in American history and this small sliver of information wasn’t something I randomly came across I literally had to go looking for it. I knew about Juneteenth in the early 2000s only because I had done the research and even though President Biden has made it a Federal Holiday most still have no idea what the date stands for.

It is sad that we still celebrate a murderous Italian that sailed under a Spanish Flag that never stepped foot on North American soil. Columbus for those of you who don’t know who I am referring to. But then again, he was a white European so there’s that.  

How many other events do we ignore of our own stained history? We do celebrate MLK day, but we discount so much more. In the early 20^th century because segregation laws that prevented Black residents from shopping in white neighborhoods, and the desire to keep money circulating in their own community, Tulsa, OK, Greenwood residents collectively funneled their cash into local Black businesses. This was affectionately called Black Wall Street. As if on que for the white populous on May 31 and June 1, 1921, mobs of white residents attacked Black residents, homes, and businesses, as well as cultural and public institutions in the Greenwood District of Tulsa, OK,. An estimated 300 people were killed and approximately 35 acres of commercial and residential property within the Greenwood District. Have any schools taught about this ugly event in our nation’s history. Well of course not because it might make Jaden uncomfortable just like amending Rosa Parks story to not include, she was disobedient to a white segregation law that said she had to sit in the back of the bus.

Guess what folks this isn’t Critical Race Theory, the right-wing cry about CRT, this is just fucking history.  Lincoln said it best: “History is not history unless it is the truth.” The facts of our past may not be the rosy picture you want to see but the lessons to be learned from our past mistakes are what history has to offer.

Today we cannot whitewash the past just because it doesn’t subscribe to a favorable, we can do no wrong, image some want to believe we have always had.  As a nation we have done some really great things, but we have also done just as many, if not more, really terrible things. The goal of history is to recognize the facts, learn from them and try with all our might not to repeat the bad shit.