Dear Friends,
Confession is good for the soul. It keeps us humble and conscientious. It is clearly a spiritual discipline that can strengthen our faith. But equally significantly, it opens us up to new insights and possibilities that often serve to broaden our understanding of ourselves and the world around us. As we walk the difficult path to social justice, confession can be the first step to necessary discernment and awareness. So, allow me to confess to you that it wasn’t until this year that I began to understand the significance of the African American celebration of Juneteenth.
I’ll begin this confession with some context from Sterling Morse, PCUSA’s coordinator for African American intercultural congregational support, which I was very happy to find on the PCUSA website.
Juneteenth: An American Celebration
‘…If you continue in my word, you are truly my disciples; and you will know the truth, and the truth will make you free.’ John 8:31b-32
On June 17, 1865, Union Major General Gordon Granger, along with 2000 federal troops, rode into the port of Galveston Texas, a state in the Confederacy not under Union control, to establish martial law. On June 19, Granger stood on the balcony of the Ashton Villa, the first mansion built on the island, and announced General Order #3, ‘The people are informed that in accordance with a Proclamation from the Executive of the United States, all slaves are free.’
It was the first time the enslaved population in the western most part of the confederacy had heard about President Abraham Lincoln’s Emancipation Proclamation issued nearly three years earlier. With the announcement, the newly freed people flooded the streets in jubilant celebration, screaming ‘I’m free! I’m free!’
The celebrations increased as the good news spread, like wildfire, throughout Texas to the remaining quarter of million slaves. Juneteenth, known also as Freedom Day, was launched the following year.
Juneteenth embodies for many African-Americans what July 4th does for all Americans – liberation. It serves as a chronological turning point in the American historical celebrating the triumph of the human spirit over the cruelty of slavery. Juneteenth is a time to pause and remember those African-Americans descendants who suffered and died, and to honor those who survived as living witnesses to the inhumane institution of slavery. It is a time to venerate the shining legacy of resistance and resiliency of an abjectly oppressed people.
Juneteenth is not just an African American holiday, but it is a template of God’s redeeming grace to all Americans, indeed, all globally who hunger and thirst after righteousness, mercy, and justice.
Juneteenth is annually celebrated in more than 200 cities in the United States, with parades, and a variety of church sponsored and community events. Texas made it an official holiday in 1979.
As our church and society continue to socially and spiritually writhe with the birth pang of intersectionality and intercultural growth, let Juneteenth be a reminder of what can, and will happen, with prayer, a little hard work, and God’s grace.
—–Sterling Morse”
I feel bad about not knowing about this celebration until recently, but I’m in good company. Dr. Henry Louis Gates Jr., Harvard professor and the unofficial dean of African American studies in the United States, has shared that he didn’t know about Juneteenth until he went to college. What I am learning is that this significant holiday, which began in the black community in the years after the Civil War, is being reclaimed in recent decades.
Juneteenth, a contraction of June nineteenth, is the most celebrated day of emancipation from slavery in the United States. Other days could well be considered for the celebration of emancipation. April 16, 1862 was the day that slavery was abolished in the nation’s capital. September 22, 1862 was the day that Lincoln issued his preliminary Emancipation Proclamation Order. January 1, 1863 was the day that the proclamation took effect. January 31, 1865 marked the day the 13th Amendment officially abolishing slavery passed in Congress, with ratification by the states nearly a year later, on December 6, 1865. April 3,1865 was the day Richmond, the capital of the Confederacy, fell. April 9, 1865 was the day Lee surrendered to Grant at Appomattox. May 1, 1865 marked the founding of Decoration Day, when former slaves in Charleston, S.C. gave the Union war dead a proper burial. July 4, 1776 was the first Independence Day. At various times in our history, all of these days have been considered as the day to celebrate and commemorate freedom from slavery, but in recent years support has begun to coalesce on Juneteenth.
So why wasn’t I aware of it until now?
On the very day – June 19, 1865 – that General Granger publicly read General Order Number 3, a quarter of a million people in Texas, then the most western state in the Confederacy, were freed from slavery. They were the last group of enslaved people in the United States to hear of their emancipation from enforced servitude. A year later, on the 19th of June, the newly freed people marked that momentous day by celebrating again. This annual celebration became a tradition in Texas and began to spread to other parts of the country, primarily within African American communities in the South.
Juneteenth became such an integral aspect of African American culture that whites in the complicated, racist times of the post-Reconstruction period apparently felt threatened and quickly began finding ways to keep African Americans from using public spaces to gather on that day. In 1872, black ministers and business owners in Houston responded by raising money and purchasing enough land to create Emancipation Park, which exists to this day. In most other communities, it was the black church that became the center of the celebrations.
Each year, African Americans would congregate, wearing their finest clothes to commemorate, as Professor Gates has written, “a past that was ‘usable’ as an occasion for gathering lost family members, measuring progress against freedom and inculcating into rising generations the values of self-improvement and racial uplift. This was accomplished through readings of the Emancipation Proclamation, religious sermons and spirituals, the preservation of slave food delicacies (always at the center: the almighty barbecue pit), as well as the incorporation of new games and traditions.”
The early twentieth century saw the renewed rise of the Ku Klux Klan, Jim Crow legislation, and a rekindled glorification of the Confederacy, and tensions over Juneteenth celebrations began to build. It became much more difficult for congregations to celebrate. When African Americans from the rural South moved in huge numbers to urban centers in the North and West in the Great Migration, awareness of Juneteenth spread. However, over time and in the face of white resistance and intolerance, it was diluted and Juneteenth was eventually virtually forgotten.
As Dr. Gates tells us, “As is well-known, Martin Luther King Jr. had been planning a return to the site of his famous ‘I Have a Dream’ speech in Washington, this time to lead a Poor People’s March emphasizing nagging class inequalities. Following his assassination, it was left to others to carry out the plan, among them his best friend, the Rev. Ralph Abernathy, and his widow, Coretta Scott King. When it became clear that the Poor People’s March was falling short of its goals, the organizers decided to cut it short on June 19, 1968, well aware that it was now just over a century since the first Juneteenth celebration in Texas.”
In the late sixties and early seventies, Juneteenth celebrations began to take hold once again. Currently, 46 states and the District of Columbia observe it as a state holiday. In 2018, the U.S. Senate passed a resolution designating June 19 as “Juneteenth Independence Day,” but it has yet to reach the House. Given recent tragedies, the tide continues to turn, however; last Tuesday (June 16), Gov. Northam said he would propose legislation to make Juneteenth a paid holiday for all state workers. UVA reacted immediately, declaring tomorrow a holiday for all their employees.
Last month, in Presbyterians Today, the Rev. Denise Anderson, coordinator for racial and intercultural justice in the Presbyterian Mission Agency, said, “I don’t want congregations co-opting the celebration without engaging in the difficult history and lingering present. Black and brown people are still incarcerated at disproportionate rates. I would hope white congregations take Juneteenth as an opportunity to wrestle with that and avail themselves to criminal justice reform in their communities.”
Tomorrow, on Juneteenth, I hope we may commit ourselves to this mission and to broader racial justice reform. As we think about this day and confess our conscious and unconscious complicity in the systemic racism and racial injustice that plague our nation, let us pray together this prayer from the Book of Common Worship,
O God, you made us in your image
And redeemed us through Jesus your Son.
Look with compassion on the whole human family,
Take away the arrogance and hatred that infect our hearts,
Break down the walls that separate us,
Unite us in bonds of love,
And, through our struggle and confession,
Work to accomplish your purpose on earth;
That, in your good time,
All nations and races may serve you in harmony
Around your heavenly throne;
Through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.