Juneteenth
We’re a few minutes into America’s first federally recognized, National Juneteenth holiday, and I’m wondering how exactly to celebrate — if that’s even the right word, given my history with the history. It’s odd, as a privileged white man, to confront the day. It’s odder still as a white man who taught history for thirteen years at a public high school in Brooklyn, and yet never once did a full lesson on that particular expression of Jubilee. I mentioned it, for sure, but never did I even dedicate a single forty-five-minute class to the history of the first Juneteenth, a holiday spontaneously inaugurated on June 19, 1865, in Galveston, Texas with the arrival of the news — carried by Federal troops — that the Emancipation Proclamation had abolished slavery over two years before, and that the North had won the war several months earlier, too. That meant that heretofore, all formerly enslaved peoples within the legal boundaries of the United States were forever in a state of legal emancipation.
It’s strange to confront this day as that man because for most of my life I didn’t know Juneteenth existed, and even when I learned about it — literally through some of my own students — I didn’t realize just how important it was to millions of my own brothers and sisters.
Such are the wages of sin and privilege.
It first clocked with me how important this day is about fifteen years ago when my friend Genesis knocked on my door on Juneteenth morning. In her hands was a Tupperware container filled with blackeyed peas. I always loved seeing Genesis, but she’d never just showed up at my door in the morning, so I asked her if everything was alright. She had a great smile on her face, and she handed me the container, then gave me a giant hug and kiss, followed by her wishes for my happy emancipation day. I didn’t know what she meant, and she looked at me a little funny, before taking the time to explain that it was Juneteenth morning and time to celebrate the Jubilee.
Turns out that this had been her family tradition for decades, maybe a century or more. Every year on Juneteenth Eve, her family would cook up a giant pot of blackeyed peas, and then they go out delivering them to those they loved shortly after dawn, to call in the light. She was living away from family in Antigua at the time, but she kept up the tradition for a tight circle of friends. And from then on, every Juneteenth morning until she moved back to California to help out her brother with some stuff, she’d be at my door with a container of blackeyed peas. I miss her now that she’s moved up north, and I think of her and her love every year about this time.
It’s strange to celebrate it today without her.
It’s also strange to celebrate today because, as a self-styled historian, I know well enough how the promise of that first Juneteenth Day — the news of which was brought to black men and women by a predominantly white military — proved to be a hollow and broken thing from folks like me. Those formerly enslaved people were granted legal rights and protections only for the first 12 years following June 19 of 1865. For once the burdens of maintaining those protections and securing those rights became too heavy for their white allies to carry, Jim Crow came crashing down with a terrible force, creating — through abject betrayal — a reality nearly as terrible as what came before, and perhaps even worse, given the broken promises of Reconstruction’s end.
I guess, in the end, it’s strange to confront this day and this celebration because I don’t much feel like I deserve it. I don’t really deserve — we white folks don’t really deserve — a place on this dancefloor. And yet, to not celebrate would be equally an affront to the cause, and to the memory of those who bore — and bear — injustice in this land. So, for better or worse, I’ll carry that ambiguity in my heart throughout the parties and revelry from now until the sun goes down.
And maybe that’s alright, after all.
Maybe today shouldn’t be easy for everyone at the party. Maybe the proper response — for these first few years at least — should be for white folk like me to raise our hearts and our glasses humbly, and from the back row. Maybe it’s right that we should retake our pledge — that I should retake my pledge — not to fail as my ancestors have done so many times in the past when it comes to allying this mighty cause. Maybe what I should do today is reflect on my very good fortune that, after so much cruelty and madness perpetrated by folks like me, I’ve still been invited to the party at all. Maybe, what I should be doing all day today — and every day — is figuring out how to further the spirit and work of Jubilee, so that I might be worthy of knock on the door next year when Juneteenth morning comes once again around the bend.
Happy Emancipation Day. Happy Juneteenth.
And love to you all.
