Some Juneteenth & Hank Gray History

Welcome to my first blog entry for the Juneteenth Day 1 Blog. Day one represents the first day of freedom for the last slaves in the U.S. to learn of their freedom. Before the fall of slaveries empire here in the U.S. slavery was an economic force for America and Africa. With the exception of the little Edo state of Benin that distinguished itself in my research during the transatlantic slave trade, Benin refused to participate in the transatlantic slave trade it continued to used slaves in its own domestic economy.

Slave trade out of Africa went in two different directions across the Atlantic Ocean to the Americas and in the opposite direction across the Sahara Desert toward places in the Muslim world. Much of the research I have done was put into a video presentation that would actually be the companion to the blog. In the late 90's I wrote, produced and directed a documentary titled A Time to be Remember, a Juneteenth Story.

Which was the source of just about all of the Juneteenth information I had collected to that point in time. I have to admit I have enjoyed being a student of this history because the study of the origin of the Juneteenth Day Celebration really opened my eyes to how much history was left out of my grade-school, high-school, and college history books. In a history about slavery where not all black people are good, some acting as snitches, slave chasers, even slaveholders, and a time where not all white people are bad due to setting up and running the Underground Railroad, I was very grateful for a path back through history in the form of writings from many different nations all about the same topic, the transatlantic slave trade.

Antislavery sentiment started in the colonies and driven mostly by Christian reformers would still take over four hundred years to gain enough popular and political support and stamp out slavery in the U.S. There was abolitionist of all races and nationalities some of whom suffer right alongside the slaves and while slavery was hardest on the African American and their family's slavery actually affected everyone in the United States and was on the verge of becoming even more pervasive prior to the Civil War. Since the Underground Railroad was run mostly by white people that make the end of slavery in the U.S. reason for black and white Americans to celebrate Juneteenth.