General Discussion
Related: Editorials & Other Articles, Issue Forums, Alliance Forums, Region ForumsToday is Juneteenth in Texas
The day in 1864 that word arrived in Galveston of the Emmancipation Proclamation. I can't help but see the parallels with today, that the radical right wing of this country would go to war with the federal government for their own racist and radical views. I see today the murder of Blacks by racist whites with a badge. I see what happened in SC. I see stories of a Black found hanging in a tree, and never a follow up story. I read of their official "news" outlet Fox telling people the SC mass murder was persecution of Christians (WTF?). And I can't help but wonder if a civil war will happen again. I see the disenfranchisement of millions of minorities and poor. Will it happen again as a last gasp of white domination, an attempt to keep control at all costs? The demise of apartheid in South Africa and the former Rhodesia was not pretty. One thing is certain, this will not continue forever. People will throw it off as they have done countless times. But the right wing is itching for a fight. The biggest question to me is how it will end.
Capt. Obvious
(9,002 posts)Gman
(24,780 posts)Union general Gordon Granger arrived in Galveston and issued General Order Number 3,
Capt. Obvious
(9,002 posts)If Haywood and other enslaved people knew about the Emancipation Proclamation, what exactly did the events of June 19, 1865 mean? Here we face a key forgotten reality about the end of the Civil War and slavery that has been shrouded in the mythology of Appomattox. The internecine conflict and the institution of slavery could not and did not end neatly at Appomattox or on Galveston Island. Ending slavery was not simply a matter of issuing pronouncements. It was a matter of forcing rebels to obey the law. To a very real extent, the Emancipation Proclamation and the 13th Amendment amounted to promissory notes of freedom. The real on-the-ground work of ending slavery and defending the rudiments of liberty was done by the freedpeople in collaboration with and often backed by the force of the US Army.
Grangers proclamation may not have brought news of emancipation but it did carry this crucial promise of force. Within weeks, fifty thousand U.S. troops flooded into the state in a late-arriving occupation. These soldiers were needed because planters would not give up on slavery. In October 1865, months after the June orders, white Texans in some regions still claim and control [slaves] as property, and in two or three instances recently bought and sold them, according to one report. To sustain slavery, some planters systematically murdered rebellious African-Americans to try to frighten the rest into submission. A report by the Texas constitutional convention claimed that between 1865 and 1868, white Texans killed almost 400 black people; black Texans, the report claimed, killed 10 whites. Other planters hoped to hold onto slavery in one form or another until they could overturn the Emancipation Proclamation in court.
Against this resistance, the Army turned to force. In a largely forgotten or misunderstood occupation, the Army spread more than 40 outposts across Texas to teach rebels the idea of law as an irresistible power to which all must bow. Freedpeople, as Haywoods quote reminds us, did not need the Army to teach them about freedom; they needed the Army to teach planters the futility of trying to sustain slavery.
Gman
(24,780 posts)This date in Texas is the commendation and celebration of the official announcement in Texas. The things in the article are incidental to the official act.
Capt. Obvious
(9,002 posts)Other than that it's gravy.
TexasProgresive
(12,157 posts)Capt. Obvious
(9,002 posts)Gman
(24,780 posts)There is nothing in the least untrue about anything I posted. Strange that you would think so.
Capt. Obvious
(9,002 posts)I even posted a link and excerpt with quotes from a slave that they had known about the Emancipation Proclamation all along.
I even bolded one part for you.
Gman
(24,780 posts)Between something official and something that is rumor or word of mouth. Just because they heard about it doesn't make that an official government act.
Juneteenth is the celebration of that official act.
Capt. Obvious
(9,002 posts)If you set up your post with a falsehood - especially in the very first sentence - it ruins your post.
And you're helping continue the myth that I pointed out to you.
But have at it. I'm done kicking your post.
Gman
(24,780 posts)And not really know what they're talking about.
Iliyah
(25,111 posts)January 1, 1863 was the actual date to set the negroes free. News of their FREEDOM trickle down many months some states, years.
Many Blacks have adopted Juneteenth and celebrate it all over the country.
KamaAina
(78,249 posts)South Berkeley, the historically AA (though gentrifying ) part of town next to Oakland, has a huge Juneteenth celebration.