Happy Juneteenth from a Land Where Old Times are Forgotten
Interesting story in The Dallas Morning News today by Selwyn Crawford about growing national popularity for Juneteenth, a holiday originally thought to be strictly a Texas thing. Juneteenth marks the official emancipation of slaves in Texas in 1865, two years after Abraham Lincoln's Emancipation Proclamation.
My family just visited a part of the Old South, where we toured the home of a slave-owner. Slavery was described by our tour guide in terms I took as morally neutral. The spiel focused on the wealth of the slave-owner. In mid-19th century, steamy hot, coastal South Carolina he could afford imported ice for his wine. The slave quarters were off-limits to visitors.
Crawford's piece accurately describes a debate over Juneteenth as strictly a black thing. Should Juneteenth be the big holiday, or does that overshadow and diminish the importance of Lincoln's historic proclamation?
-snip-
One of those consistent themes is a particular kind of depravity that owning another human being can bring about in the so-called owner. After all, it was this depravity of whites that inspired the first white abolitionists. The Grimke sisters of South Carolina, for example, were driven to the cause by the animalistic cruelty of whites that they witnessed on their own family plantation.
More at http://blogs.dallasobserver.com/unfairpark/2013/06/happy_juneteenth_from_a_land_w.php .
= new reply since forum marked as read
