Motivation Mondays: Revisiting Juneteenth

“Hold those things that tell your history and protect them. During slavery, who was able to read, write, or keep anything? The ability to have somebody to tell your story to is so important. It says: ‘I was here. I may be sold tomorrow. But you know I was here.'” Maya Angelou

Motivation Mondays: Revisiting Juneteenth

Juneteenth, also known as Freedom Day, Jubilee Day, and Liberation Day, is a holiday celebrated on June 19 to commemorate the emancipation of enslaved people in the US. The holiday was first celebrated in Texas, where on that date in 1865, in the aftermath of the Civil War, enslaved people were declared free under the prior terms of the 1862 Emancipation Proclamation. Juneteenth refers to June 19, 1865, when Major General Gordon Granger ordered the enforcement of the Emancipation Proclamation in Texas at the end of the American Civil War.

In January 1865, Congress finally proposed the Thirteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution, solidifying the national abolition of slavery. By June 1865, almost all enslaved persons had been freed. While slavery ended at different times in states across the USA, the name Juneteenth was first used in the 1890s by African Americans as a reminder of the challenges faced on the walk to freedom, the resilience and determination to preserve Black history while recognizing the ongoing fight for equality.

Today, Juneteenth is celebrated in many ways across communities in the USA. There are parades, talks, and gatherings to learn about, read about, and enjoy African American culture, history, and food. It is celebrated like many other special holidays, with a focus on the events that led to it and the Emancipation Proclamation. Did it end there? Did freedom reign for African Americans thereafter? No. Read on.
READ: History – What Is Juneteenth?
NYTimes – The History and Meaning of Juneteenth

Official Juneteenth Poem by Kristina Kay:
We Rose
From Africa’s heart, we rose
Already a people, our faces ebon, our bodies lean,
We rose
Skills of art, life, beauty, and family
Crushed by forces we knew nothing of, we rose
Survive we must, we did,
We rose
We rose to be you, we rose to be me,
Above everything expected, we rose
To become the knowledge we never knew,
We rose
Dream, we did
Act we must.

“Nobody’s free until everybody’s free.” Fannie Lou Hamer

Motivation Mondays: Revisiting Juneteenth

In response to the Emancipation Proclamation and the proposed 13th Amendment to the US Constitution, which was approved by Congress on January 31, 1865, and ratified on December 6, 1865, a more sinister form of oppression arose. A new set of laws was instituted that were racially segregationist, discriminatory, and deliberately created to set back any gains African Americans expected to receive from the newly ratified Amendment.

What happened during 1865 and into 1866? Southern states passed the Black Codes, which were restrictive laws limiting access to African Americans and forcing many freed people back into a new form of slavery; “a dependent labor economy, the codes established virtual re-enslavement through harsh vagrancy and labor contract laws.” The Vagrancy Laws allowed local white authorities to arrest freed people for minor infractions and commit them to involuntary labor. It was a new form of enslavement that subverted the 13th Amendment and re-enslaved many.

Mississippi and South Carolina were the first states to enact the codes. This was also a precursor to the Ku Klux Klan (KKK), which was founded in 1865 and, with it, foreshadowed the rise of Jim Crow laws. So people in the black community noted that in 1865, African Americans were freeish not entirely free.
Read: History – Black Codes
Wikipedia – The Black Codes, also called the Black Laws

Won’t You Celebrate with Me? by Lucille Clifton
won’t you celebrate with me
what I have shaped into
a kind of life? I had no model.
born in Babylon
both nonwhite and woman
what did I see to be except myself?
I made it up
here on this bridge between
starshine and clay,
my one hand holding tight
my other hand; come celebrate
with me that every day
something has tried to kill me
and has failed.

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“We shall overcome because the arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends toward justice.” Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.

Motivation Mondays: Revisiting Juneteenth

As African Americans celebrated the events of Juneteenth, lurking in the background was the rise of the KKK, which by 1870 had reached into every Southern state, countering any gains the 13th Amendment offered. The goal was to reestablish white supremacy and set aside any expectations of equal access. Right in step with the KKK were the Jim Crow laws, a collection of state and local statutes that legalized racial segregation. Jim Crow laws lasted over 100 years, from the post-Civil War era until 1966, and the tacit plan was “to marginalize African Americans by denying them the right to vote, hold jobs, get an education, or other opportunities.” Between the Jim Crow Laws and the blatant violence of the KKK, for black folk, freedom looked nothing like its textbook definition.

The violence and terror the KKK showered on African Americans is in the history books, and lynching was the most horrific of those acts of violence. Since their rise coincided with the post-Civil War Reconstruction period, Congress battled them by passing the Reconstruction Act and the 14th Amendment, which guaranteed universal male suffrage. Women’s suffrage had to wait until the 19th Amendment, ratified on August 26, 1920. Jim Crow also saw the rise of fearless leaders in the African American community who spoke out and fought the Jim Crow laws: the NAACP, Ida B. Wells, Charlotte Hawkins Brown, Isaiah Montgomery, and so many others who even gave their lives for the cause.

While the Klan tightened its grip on the South, Congress initiated three other enforcement acts, including the Ku Klux Klan Act of 1871, to stem the rise, but it didn’t deter them. By the early 1920s, the 2nd generation of klansmen were growing strong as anti-black, Roman Catholics, Jews, foreigners, and organized labor. With time, their influence waned, and by 1964, when President Lyndon B. Johnson signed the Civil Rights Act, both Jim Crow and the KKK lost steam. In its place are the complex and covert forms of racism we see today.

While Juneteenth had been celebrated since 1865, it was not legally recognized as a national holiday until June 17, 2021, when President Joe Biden signed a bill officially designating June 19 as a federal holiday commemorating the end of slavery in America. The struggle for full and equitable freedom in all its permutations continues.
READ: History – Ku Klux Klan
History – Jim Crow Laws

Lineage By Margaret Walker
My grandmothers were strong.
They followed plows and bent to toil.
They moved through fields sowing seed.
They touched earth, and grain grew.
They were full of sturdiness and singing.
My grandmothers were strong.
My grandmothers are full of memories.
Smelling of soap and onions and wet clay
With veins rolling roughly over quick hands
They have many clean words to say.
My grandmothers were strong.
Why am I not as they are?

Positive Motivation Tip: Hold your history close to your heart and pass it down. That is the most important part of preserving family legacy and history.

PHOTO CREDITS/ATTRIBUTIONS: All Photos:  via Pixabay, Adobe Free Stock, Wikipedia, and My Personal Photos

Ask. Believe. Receive. ©
Elizabeth Obih-Frank
Mirth and Motivation
Positive Kismet