Juneteenth Cancellation

Juneteenth Day Celebration cancellations are starting to add up to quite possibly equal no Juneteenth Celebrations this summer, nationwide, due to Covid-19 concerns. To help prevent the spread of the coronavirus most state governors are asking Juneteenth organizers and others not to hold events for large gatherings of people. The African American community is being hit disproportionately hard by this virus with no vaccine. As a result of all the above, I have been watching Juneteenth celebration plans all over the country dissolve into cancelation after cancelation for summer 2020.  

In fact, as I write this post, the African American Family Reunion Committee in Vallejo-California and the NAACP's Jamestown Branch has just added their names to the list of organizations canceling their Juneteenth Day Celebration for this year. Whether a vaccine is created for the coronavirus or the new normal with regard to public gatherings stays in place I am hoping that the Juneteenth celebration will make its appearance in 2021 and continue on from there. For those of you who follow me on my Juneteenth website and FB location you know I celebrate Juneteenth all year round when it comes to sharing Juneteenth information.

June 19, 1865, and the celebration that grew into the oldest African American celebration in the U.S. "Juneteenth" should always be remembered even if it can't be celebrated in groups of more than ten. Juneteenth is all about family because after that date (in 1865) African American families separated by slavery at least had the chance to keep their immediate family together, and though it would not always be possible or in some cases desirable, begin putting their separated families back together.

Because back in the years' BC (Before Cable television) when there were no cellphones, tablets, televisions, or radios family time was often used for sharing meals and sharing stories. It didn't matter whether or not you could read when it came to the old African tradition of storytelling. The story of Juneteenth deserves to be passed down and passed on with or without becoming an official holiday.

Information is so readily available nowadays that I sometimes see my kids on their cellphone fact-checking someone in the middle of a conversation. Trying to imagine what it would be like without all of today's technology can be both sobering and kind of scary. But what if, for some reason, all of the technology we depend on today blinked out? No desktop, no laptop, no tablet, or cellphone service.

Information about the Emancipation Proclamation, and the end of slavery, should be passed from one generation to the next in honor of all those (black and white) who resisted slavery and fought to end slavery but didn't live long enough to see that dream, the abolishment of slavery, come true. From a member of the African American Juneteenth Celebrating communities, (me) I hope that the entertainment and activity associated with the oldest African American Celebration (Juneteenth) in this country will be back next year so that organizations like the African Family Reunion Committee, in Solano California the NAACP Jamestown Branch and all the other Juneteenth Celebration organizations taking a knee for the community in 2020 will be back in force next June.

I plan to still share Juneteenth related information on my Juneteenth website, and Facebook locations. A shout out to those in Rochester N.Y. area and the organizers of the virtual Juneteenth 5K Run and Walk, registration is still open through June 19, 2020. For those who register for a $10.00 donation you will receive a poster honoring Harriet Tubman, "Keep Going" by local artist Amber Stokes, and your donation will support the construction of the Rochester Civil Rights Heritage Park site at Baden Park.

June 19, 2020, public celebration or not, if you would like to join me in a quiet celebration dedicated to the memory of slavery and Emancipation my thoughts will be with yours on that date. Juneteenth around the nation, and in some cases the world, I was once contacted by a Juneteenth organization from Germany. Anyway, in places Juneteenth is celebrated with a day, a week, even an entire month, and even though it's still not easy for many Americans to accept the truth about the past or to understand the dignity that the Juneteenth celebration brings to the African Americans community, the celebration of this rich history still grows a little bigger each year.

Note from Frederick Douglass to Harriet Tubman

After the passage of the 13th Amendment work on the Underground Railroad was done. Black abolitionists like William Still who had kept track of most of the runaway slaves Harriet Tubman and others had brought his way. Still, kept a written record that would surely have gotten him some serious jail time for logging all the stolen property (slaves) he was able to gather their family information from. William Still was one of the few who knew that Harriet Tubman's life had been spared by a sickness that left her unable to accompany John Brown on his ill-fated raid at Harpers Ferry West Virginia.

Frederick Douglass too, was aware of Harriet's risky walks in the dark to transport slaves willing to buy their freedom with their lives and follow Harriet. Douglass and other abolitionists had contributed to the purchase of new shoes for Harriet, and some of those she was shepherding so that they could complete their journey to Canada. William Still would eventually turn all of the information he collected, interviewing runaway slaves, into a book (The Underground Railroad by William Still) that I check out of the library when I was doing my research for my Juneteenth video presentation.

Sarah Hopkins Bradford chronicled Harriet's life story in her book titled Scenes in the life of Harriet Tubman. When the manuscript about Harriet Tubman was complete Harriet wrote to one of her long-time abolitionist friends, Frederick Douglass, to request his testimonial about some of Harriet's exploits on the Underground Railroad. In August of 1868, Frederick Douglass wrote the following letter to Harriet Tubman.




"Dear Harriet---I am glad to know that the story of your eventful life has been written by a kind lady and that the same is soon to be published. You ask for what you do not need when you call upon me for a word of commendation. 

I need such words from you far more than you can need them from me, especially where your superior labors and devotion to the cause of the lately enslaved of our land are known as I know them. The difference between us is very marked. 

Most that I have done and suffered in the service of our cause has been in public, and I have received much encouragement at every step of the way. You, on the other hand, have labored in a private way. I have wrought in the day – you in the night. 

I have had the applause of the crowd and the satisfaction that comes of being approved by the multitude, while the most that you have done has been witnessed by a few trembling, scarred, and foot-sore bondmen and women, whom you have led out of the house of bondage, and whose heartfelt, “God bless you,” has been your only reward. 

The midnight sky and the silent stars have been the witnesses of your devotion to freedom and of your heroism. Excepting John Brown – of sacred memory – I know of no one who has willingly encountered more perils and hardships to serve our enslaved people than you have. Much that you have done would seem improbable to those who do not know you as I know you. 

It is, to me, a great pleasure and a great privilege to bear testimony for your character and your works, and to say to those to whom you may come, that I regard you in every way truthful and trustworthy."

Your friend,

Frederick Douglass.

The freedmen's Bureau

After the Civil War ended in 1865 March of that year marked the activation of Freedmen's Bureau. A few months later words of freedom would finally penetrated the Texas stronghold of Galveston setting off the first Juneteenth celebration in which thousands of former slaves in the south first heard the reading of General Order #3 "The people of Texas are hereby informed that in accordance with a proclamation from the Executive of the United States, all slaves are free!" When the joy and celebration of the First Juneteenth Celebration finally died down, I can almost imagine the collective Now What, that followed? The newly freed slaves in the south had no land no work and no money. They were forbidden from gather at military forts, and so no real place to go. The general understanding was that the ex-slaves should continue to toil for their former masters only this time as a paid laborers.

Talked about in congress as the bureau of Refugees, Freedmen, and Abandoned Lands, the Freedmen's Bureau was the organization put in place to help turn a former slave workforce, with no pay, into and ex-slave-labor workforce, with pay. Enacted by Congress the Freedmen's Bureau was under the authority of the War Department and intended to last the duration of the Civil War plus one year but the agency would operate a lot longer. The government set out to reconstruct the battered south where thousands of newly freed slaves and thousands of former Confederate soldiers had to find a way to live together with thousands of unhappy southern citizens who had, for the most part, lost everything.

First came the 13th Amendment that would abolish slavery everywhere in the U.S., even in the "friendly states" to the union, not included in Abraham Lincolns Emancipation. Next, came the 14th Amendment that gave former slaves, not consider to be U.S. citizens, birthright-legal-citizenship and finally there was the 15th Amendment that gave colored men (not women) the right to vote. The Freedmen's Bureau was where 4 million former slaves would learn about the new amendments and benefits available to them and help the newly freed people make the transition to paid labors, that was the plan anyway.

The reality, however, was that the government-driven southern reconstruction would slow to a crawl when southern lawmakers were welcomed back into Washington DC and began cranking out laws designed to keep the races apart. Colored people could have parks, they just had to be for color people only, unlike in the days of slavery when slaves were forbidden education colored people could now be educated and have schools, the schools, however, had to be for colored people only. Separate but equal was the justification for segregation and in my opinion, were any modern-day reconstruction finally ground to a stop. Many of the rights promised to the newly freed slaves under the constitution in 1865, would not even be available to their colored descendants until the 1960s when segregation was ended.

To this date, there is still debate as to just how effective the Freedmen's Bureau really was? The bureau's powers eventually expanded to assist people with finding family members who had become separated during the Civil War. The bureau also served as a legal advocate in the national and local court for colored people with no other means to represent themselves. The Freedmen's Bureau worked on both sides of the skin color divide to find new ways to work together as employer and employee. Sharecropping would grow from that idea, and that's a whole other post.

I think it could be said that the Freedmen's Bureau was significant became it was the first agency to show this nation's willingness to involve the government in labor relations by working to convince planters and former slave owners to rebuild and to accept their former slaves as paid laborers. The bureau was the first form of social welfare when it came to providing a place for ex-slaves to receive help with learning about the new social and educational opportunities available to them in a post-slavery America.

Under constant attack from politicians, racist, anti-reconstructionist, suffering from a severe lack of funding and pressure, mostly from white southerners, the Freedmen's Bureau was dissolved in 1872 with the institution of slavery replaced by the institution of racism and plenty of work still left to be done.

August 20th 1619

While a lot of us in social media land have chosen to celebrate the last day of slavery in the U.S. the Nation Association for the Advancement of Color People, the NAACP has decided to celebrate August 20th, 1619, which at the writing of this post is just a little over 400 years ago when the first hand full of African slaves taken out of Africa arrived in Port Comfort, British North America.

The almost two dozen African slaves that arrived August 20the, 1619 were the first legitimately documented African slaves in what is now the U.S. even though it's believed that undocumented African slaves were actually in this country even before someone officially logged them in. August 20th, 1619 marked be beginning of a worldwide-cruelty that would last for over 400 years. So let me try to explain why I feel that slavery was a particular type of cruelty to the African race that I would much rather celebrate the ending of, rather than its beginning.

Slaves were a commodity that many different nations traded in, so during those 400 years of slavery in the U.S., the ships participating in the wholesale removal of African people from Africa flew the flags from many different nations. After hundreds of years, the British were among the first to put an end to slavery in Great Britain, the British then joined with others to blockade to west coast of Africa from illegal slave traders, like America, demonstrated a skill at evading the British blockade and continuing to remove generations of young men and women from their African homeland on a scale so vast that even though thousands of slaves lost their lives on the journey to the Americas the slave lives lost were looked at as simply the cost of doing business.

In the end, our ancestors would no doubt be pleased to learn that slavery would eventually be done away-with in the Americas. Something the ancestors prayed for and entertained rumors about but did not live long enough to see.  They might even be surprised to learn that my thoughts about reparations have evolved because after 400 years of being under-appreciated, under-represented, underpaid, and under-educated reparations in the form of opportunities like getting back black-owned farmland seized by the local governments in the south, or reparations in the form of college education and job opportunities where there was once none all goes toward building a stronger America, if you ask me.

And, after 400 years a lot has changed in America; slavery is gone, Port Comfort where the first African slaves first landed in North America today has been renamed: Fort Monroe, in Hampton, Virginia and after 400 years of slavery there are still some things that remain the same with a few minor differences; the chains have been mainly replaced by debt (okay I had to throw that one in) and many of the injustices our slave ancestors suffered from, during slavery, still exist today white supremacy, mass incarceration, and racial violence. So when it comes to celebrating August 20th, 1619 the beginning of slavery in this country and June 19, 1865, the end of slavery in the U.S. they are both important dates, in my opinion.

The Internet of people, places, and things will continue to make it easier for those willing to do the looking/Internet searching to come up with alternate times worthy of celebration by African American people. I would not be surprised if one day some one's Internet search leads them to the first African slave to be put on a ship bound for the Americas, or perhaps it will lead to the first African mother to give birth to the first African slave to reach the U.S. While that future day might still be significant to the beginning of slavery in the Americas, it's the last day of slavery in this country, Juneteenth, that will always be the most significant to me.

Celebrate Juneteenth Every Month

I like the way, Pastor Gwendolyn Thrower from Ocilla, Georgia, thinks when it comes to the Juneteenth Celebration. Her belief is based on the premise until you know and understand where you've been as a race it will be very hard to determine where you're going. She believes that a lot of millennials are not educated on the real meaning behind the oldest African American celebration in the U.S.

It has been my experience to chant with millennials, the ones I raised, and others about Juneteenth and I was surprised to see that they had problems with the facts about even more recent history such as the Civil Rights movement. Martin Luther Kings name came up a lot but when it came to an understanding of all the lives lost during the civil rights movement in this country many had no ideas of what it has cost in lives to be able to walk into a voting booth and cast a ballot. And for the African American young, and old, registered to vote, seldom is the African American voter turnout 100%, but that's another post.

Pastor Thrower said that the people who started the Juneteenth Celebration used to go from community to community with the Juneteenth Celebration. Even though the celebration started in June (June 19) because it was a traveling celebration there would be a Juneteenth celebration in June, July, August, September or whenever after the initial start in June.

And to be honest, if I had lived back then I would not have been opposed to traveling, preferably up north, and celebrating Juneteenth in every town along the way, but nowadays most communities are lucky to be able to have a single Juneteenth celebration, once a year. How do you feel about the idea to celebrate Juneteenth every month? I would much rather see an approved educational curriculum that made Juneteenth a solid part of a history textbook used in school classrooms so that everyone will understand and hopefully appreciate what the meaning of the end of slavery and the beginning of the oldest African American celebration in the U.S. meant to our American African ancestors.

So I appreciate Pastor Thrower for speaking out loud about our ancestors who did celebrate Juneteenth once a month. That might be one way to make sure the history and significance of Juneteenth are realized by this entire nation. I think that Pastor Thrower is well-deserving of the Humanitarian Award she was given for helping her community there in Ocilla, Georgia and for her organizing the local Juneteenth celebration there too. I have participated in organizing a Juneteenth even a time or two over the years, but I have to be honest, currently, I can not see having a Juneteenth celebration every month, not with all the organization that is required to get the city, and the local community all on the same page come Juneteenth day.

Luckily for me, most of my Juneteenth organization tasks were from when I worked at Stanford University, not quite a city but for sure a big community. The point is millennials and everyone else still not aware of the significance of what the Juneteenth Day Celebration means to African Americans and the descendants of the abolitionist that helped bring about the end of slavery in this country needs to be learned and passed down to the generations that come after us.  One of the reasons we understand what freedom with regard to this nation is, and still celebrate the 4th of July, is because of that battle for independence cut deep into the fabric of America. Just like southerners caught in the north when the Civil War broke out there was Loyalist who felt they were stuck on the wrong side of the War of Independence and the fight to be free of British rule.

The slaves in this country fought not only in America's war for independence, but they fought just as hard in the Civil War to be free, and the day they received that freedom, Juneteenth, was just as important to our slave ancestors as the 4th of July, only much more personal.   So I say if we don't celebrate Juneteenth once a month I'm grateful for the annual Juneteenth celebrations that continue to educate and entertain us all.

American Colonization Society

The American Colonization Society was made up of slave owners and slave merchants with a few well-meaning abolitionists and some free colored people thrown in for good measure. Why the American Colonization Society was founded was to set up a colony on the west coast of Africa and migrate American slaves to Africa. The American Colonization Society significance was that the colony started by the A.C.S. would eventually grow into the nation of Liberia (Liberia the Latin translation means a free place and is the same root for the English word Liberty) so if the Liberian flag looks a little familiar, this post will share that reason.

I believe the slave owners and merchants were trying to deal with the free-slave problem. Just like not all white people were slave owners, not all black people were slaves. The owners and merchants knew that a few free slaves offered to all slaves and that hope is a dangerous emotion to try to contain. To the slave merchants and owners, the slave was a valuable part of their personal wealth and free labor. Slaveholder could imagine what it would be like if too many slaves were allowed to live free, and own weapons.  For those old enough to remember the stories of the tattered and blown nearly apart sailing-ship that limped into New Orleans carrying the remnant survivors of the slave revolt in Haiti the thought of free slaves with weapons was good enough reason to think that the best place for growing numbers of freed slaves was somewhere out of this country. Pulling together the resources to make it happen the A.C.S was born.

A slave could be freed by purchasing their own freedom, or by purchasing the freedom of a family member. The laws in the south were written so that in many places even a free slave had to pick a local master if they wanted to live free in that county. In the northern U.S. a free slave could live as a free man or woman but because of the color of their skin, and unscrupulous slave hunters even northern "free slave" could be kidnapped and sold into slavery. (See the movie 12 years a slave.) Another way a slave could be designated as free was through something called a Deed of Manumission. Most slave owners who had children by slave women did not want their children to live the rest of their life as a slave. So the children fathered by a slave master could be freed from slavery at some agreed-upon age, like 19 or 20.

Free slaves were looked at as a problem to the slaveholder and merchants, so they worked together to figure out how to deal with the issue of free salves and one of their solutions was the American Colonization Society. Many of the well-meaning abolitionists, and free colored people, that joined the slaveholder and merchants did so because they believed African Americans would never be allowed all of the freedoms granted to white people at that time and that meant slave children being denied an educated.

Some abolitionist bought into the fact that living a life of freedom, in another land, away from the racism and unfair laws in America was the best choice for American Africans willing to accept a ticket from the A.C.S. to live free. Even though most of the African Americans emigrating to Africa had never seen Africa before nor could they speak the African language they still made the choice to take the voyage to be able to live free. In many cases that also meant leaving family behind. The A.C.S. acquired ships and loaded with supplies, American families, and news from home began making regular voyages to the new colony on the west coast of Africa.

The A.C.S. opened offices and set up agents in the African colony to help newly arrived Americans learn about the people, places and things Africa was made of and overtime Africans taught the new arrivals to speak the African language, but more often than not, the new arrivals taught the African people how to speak English. A.C.S. ships continued to bring supplies, more people, and news from family members left behind. The news was not good because of talk about the growing threat of a war between the states. The American emigrants in Africa would eventually forge an uneasy connection with the African people in the land of their ancestors.

The Liberian flag well that is a little complicated. (for me anyway) Liberia is actually made up of several different counties and each county has its own flag. However, all of the country flags incorporate the red, white, and blue canton with a white star in the corner. The flag came into existence in 1847, when on July 16 Liberia Declared its Independence from the American basted A.C.S. With their new independence and their new flag, the Liberians used the American constitution as their template and built a society similar to the one in the U.S. that was, unfortunately, eventually accompanied by many of the same prejudices left behind in America.

News of the beginning of the Civil War, the end of the Civil War, and the assassination of President Abraham Lincoln would also make its way across the ocean to the colony of American living on African soil, along with news from their family members still living in America about a new holiday celebration they named Juneteenth to mark the end of slavery in the southern states.

Two years after the end of the Civil War, slavery had been abolished throughout all of the United States and the A.C.S. had delivered over 13,000 American emigrants to the west coast of Africa and the organization would continue to operate until about 1913. The A.C.S. wasn't the only group that decided to offer colored people living in their country a free ride to Africa. The British had a similar society that performed the same task of offering colored people in England a free cruise to the African west coast, and while I don't have the name of their society comparable to the A.C.S. the colony the British started on the west coast of Africa is today know as Sierra Leone.

When I worked with the Coast Guard back in the 80's I met a Liberian Ship captain whose ship was in Oakland waiting on a load of scrap metal. I remember telling them about someone I had met from their country when I was in college and that they had shared with me information about what they called the Americo Liberians and their feeling of superiority over the indigenous Liberian population due to the Americo Liberian belief in Christianity.

I also shared the fact that in my college days almost all of my American friends had changed their American names to African sounding names, making my friend from Liberia the only one of us with the truly American sounding name, hearing about the American students and their interest in African names made the ship's captain smile, I think she was impressed.

Juneteenth Awareness Walk

Other names I have heard used for Juneteenth were Juneteenth Freedom Day or Juneteenth Independence Day. Juneteenth is recognized by many Americans of African descendants as America's second independence day since most of their African ancestors were not free after America celebrated its independence from Great Britain. It would be another 89 years after 1776 before African, and African Americans, still living in slavery, would be able would truly celebrate their independence in America.

Not long after I first learned about the Juneteenth Day Celebration I learned that there was also an ongoing movement in this country to make Juneteenth a national holiday. Over the years since then, I have watched more and more states make Juneteenth an official state holiday. Now that 46 states in this country recognize Juneteenth as a state holiday, a woman from Forth Worth Texas, by the name of Opal Lee, has decided to do a Juneteenth Awareness Walk Detroit where the Democratic Presidential hopefuls will be having their debate to bring attention to her personal campaign to make Juneteenth a national holiday.

The 92-year-old also is no stranger to using her legs and stamina to make her point, she walked a couple years ago in an attempt to get the attention of President Obama and the Congress, back in 2016, and if all goes well Opal will launch a Change.org petition to make Juneteenth a National Day of Observance this coming fall. She will kick off her 2020 campaign to get the Juneteenth legislation passed and put in some more walking miles to achieve her goal.

I believe that making space on the national calendar for this particular holiday (Juneteenth) would go along way toward improving race relations in this country. Just as the first step to solving the race problem is admitting that there is a race problem. The first step of healing the physiological and economic wounds of slavery might just be becoming comfortable with the fact that there was once slavery in this country to begin a national dialogue.

Taught on a national basis it might not be all that bad for people to learn that not all white people had slaves and that not all black people were slaves. Or that for the slave on-the-run not all white people were bad, and not all black people were good. If the Juneteenth Day Celebration becomes a reminder of these things I believe that would be some helpful history. We should be able to learn the history behind people, places, and things that made up America's second Independence Day.

So it goes without saying that I support Opal Lee's quest to bring more attention to making Juneteenth a national holiday. And the fact now that we're up to 47 states officially celebration Juneteenth, with about 5 states to go, it is quite possible that every state in the union will be celebrating Juneteenth as a state holiday and when that happens, even if the lawmakers in Washington haven't made up their collective minds, Juneteenth will be a national holiday.

If you have questions like why is it called Juneteenth, are looking for Juneteenth quotes, Juneteenth food ideas, a Juneteeth flag, or just some friendly Juneteenth facts be sure to see some of the other posts on this blog?