Spot of Parchment, June 2020 - Juneteenth
I hope this message finds you and your family safe and healthy. Each month feels like a new world, so it's hard to know where to start. Let me begin by saying that I have a bit of personal news to share. Friday was my last day at the White House Historical Association and I'm starting a new adventure.
As of July 1, I'll be Scholar-in-Residence at the Institute for Thomas Paine Studies and a Senior Fellow at the International Center for Jefferson Studies. I'm grateful for much of my time at the WHHA, I loved working with so many of my colleagues, and I learned so much more than I expected. But there was simply too much I couldn't say and write, so it was time to move on.
On June 19, 1865, Major General Gordon Granger arrived in Galveston, Texas with news that the war had ended and that all remaining enslaved people in Texas were now free. These individuals were the final people kept in bondage, despite the Emancipation Proclamation issued by President Abraham Lincoln two and a half years prior.
Celebrations were planned to commemorate the event, which are still observed each year in Texas and across the country. Some of the regular activities include rodeos, fishing, bbqs, and baseball. Prayer services, parades, and feasts are also included. To this day, many African Americans consider June 19 to be their Independence Day, since July 4 did not apply to free or enslaved African Americans. In 1979, Texas became the first state to make Juneteenth an official holiday. Since then, forty-one other states and D.C. recognize the day as a state holiday.
Dr. Peniel Joseph, Professor and Chair in Ethics and Political Values at the University of Texas Austin and author of The Sword and Shield: The Revolutionary Lives of Malcom X and Martin Luther King Jr., wrote an opinion editorial for CNN arguing Juneteenth should be a national holiday. I think his words are much more powerful on this subject than mine and I’d like to share a few passages with you:
“In the African American community Juneteenth represents a sacred day of memory marked by millions of people annually participating in festivals, parades and other gatherings. National holidays serve as the ultimate reflection of the sacrifices of workers, soldiers and patriotic Americans who shed blood for democracy and gave of themselves for this republic. No group deserves this honor more than the generations of enslaved African Americans who were key to building the United States into the greatest superpower the world has ever known.
Commemorating Juneteenth as a national holiday would serve as an important reminder, no matter which political party occupied the White House or their political rhetoric, that racial slavery and the black Americans who helped end this system of bondage have been imprinted on the soul of this nation. We carry the active scars and unhealed wounds that are just beginning to be acknowledged and America must never forget how its enslaved African Americans and their descendants continue to shape its present and future.
A national holiday commemorating Juneteenth would spur not only conversation about the origins of our current racial and political conflicts, but would also prompt vitally necessary education about white supremacy and its manifestations in policies and political actions that are anti-black, anti-democratic and anti-human.”
Lest anyone think that this history is long past, the U.S. federal government made its last payment on a Union soldier pension at the end of May—May 2020. Irene Triplett’s father, Mose Triplet, fought for the Confederacy before defecting and joining Union forces. Twenty years after the end of the war, he applied for a pension. In 1930, when he was 83 years old, his daughter was born. This history is still very much with us.