Juneteenth 2021 The First

The Juneteenth 2021 Celebration will be a little different from all of the other Juneteenth celebrations that have happened before now because the year 2021 celebration will be the first time Juneteenth is celebrated as a national holiday. Just like the years of hard work, dedication, and prayers that led to ending slavery in the United States, the years of hard work, dedication, and prayers to make Juneteenth a national holiday have finally become a realization. 

Only, unlike the news about the Emancipation Proclamation, that was withheld from the slaves in the southern U.S. for two years, notification of Juneteenth reaching national holiday status was instant, given today's technology, catching many people, myself included, off guard. Talk about making Juneteenth a federal holiday had been going on ever since I first became aware that the juneteenth celebration existed.

To be perfectly honest I had started to believe that because of today's highly polarized political climate debate in Washington DC about making Juneteenth a national holiday would once more be batted around and once more tabled, tossed aside, forgotten. News of President Joe Biden finally signing the Juneteenth Celebration into the history books came as a total surprise.

Juneteenth Games & Decor
by GK Designs

And the name Juneteenth National Independence Day has a nice ring to it since on July 4, 1776 the majority of black people living in the colonies were still slaves and not considered citizens of the same nation they fought for in the colonial war, and in the Civil War. June 19th, 1865 was the date that freedom for African American people in the United States began followed by the 13th Amendment that abolished slavery everywhere in the U.S., and the 14th Amendment granting citizenship rights and equal protection under the law to the ex-slaves.

I would love to have been able to learn the above historical facts when I was in grammar and Jr. high school. When I was in grade-school I had no ideas about a Juneteenth celebration. My parents (from Louisiana and Texas) seemed more interested in forgetting about their life experinces growing up in the Jim Crow south than sharing them.

For the sake of the African Ancestors, the history of slavery in this nation should not be forgotten. It (slavery) did after all happen, and African American people in this country have suffered from the end of slavery aftereffects since June, 19th 1865, and the so-called re-construction period. For the naysayers who might think that learning about slavery might evoke too many unflattering images of the way some white people used to treat black people, I say this would be an excellent opportunity to learn about all of the white people that did not support slavery and the contributions they made that would eventually bring slavery to an end in the U.S. 

Juneteenth is truly a National Independence Day because what started on that day and ended with the passage of the 13th Amendment did make that a day of freedom for the entire nation and the words in the constitution finally true for everyone, that all men were created equal and treated equally under the law.

 
 

The African Ancestors

The blessings of the ancestors are greater than those of living human beings. It's important to remember that as you do for your ancestors, your children will do for you. Slavery created countless forgotten family memories for the African Americans whose families had been pulled apart, with family members scattered by the wind. The end of slavery in the United States did very little to mend the African American family. 

 

Families could still be separated by circumstance because newly freed slaves hand nothing. The Freedmen's Bureau was set up to assist the ex-slaves but it did not work. Most slaves ended up returning to their former masters as laborers and sharecroppers in an agreement that almost guaranteed their ability not to prosper. The system former slave owners set up meant most sharecroppers could work the entire year and still end up owing most if not all of their money to the former slave owner.

 

When I think about the African ancestors, I end up feeling that in spite of the fact they were no longer amongst the living they were the lucky ones. Those who chose to be drowned rather than be carried away from home and into the unknown, and all of the drowned slaves, who through no choice of their own, were purposefully drowned because of sickness or to prevent a slave ship captain from being caught with slaves on board his vessel during a surprise boarding by the British or American governments, tasked with maintaining a blockade to prevent new slaves from being shipped to America. 

 

African and African American ancestor's souls, that had long since found their way back to the motherland were spared the days of slavery in the U.S., and even though we do not speak the language of our ancestors, hundreds of years later African Americans today can still feel the unwelcome heat of racism the ancestors learned to live with. Everything that made our African ancestors unique in their clothing, their language, their religion, and their families were taken from them upon arrival in the United States.

 

Out of that social and cultural deprivation for colored people associated with slavery in the United States came today’s modern-day Americans of African descent, like me, that honor our ancestors with events like the Juneteenth Celebration. In the African world and cosmological view of life, the ancestors are forever alive. It is said that the ancestors do things like connect Africans to their beloved ones, bless their fertility, even intervene when there is a spiritual blockage or polluting elements that threaten happiness, order, health, and life.

Our African slave ancestors came from a continent that consisted of a mixture of countries and various tribes that each possessed their own unique characteristics which in my opinion, is not only worth celebrating but worth studying as well. While I have not yet gone to African Ancestry and submitted any DNA to be traced back to the continent of Africa I have for a long time been able to trace my family roots back to the state of Texas, the birthplace of the Juneteenth Celebration and the home of many of the ancestors I celebrate.