Juneteenth- Freedom Day
- alachuacommunityco
- Jun 3
- 1 min read
By M.J.
The Emancipation Proclamation was cute or whatever. It did a lot of good things.
The intended audiences were England, France, and white abolitionists. Free and enslaved Black people were not considered human.
So if the Emancipation Proclamation set everyone free and it was so great- why did it take two and a half years for Juneteenth to occur? Because it was just a flowery bureaucratic speech that they had no way of enforcing. And why rush? The only people who cared were the abolitionists- because the Black people once again don’t count, but they knew they were free and help was coming soon! That’s all they knew of the Emancipation Proclamation and it was enough.
When Juneteenth FINALLY arrived, everything else happened pretty quickly- except the freeing of the enslaved in the northern states like Delaware…oh and Mississippi that didn’t ratify the 13th amendment until 2013.
The first Juneteenth was celebrated on June 14th, 1866- exactly one year after 250,000 enslaved people were freed from chattel slavery by executive decree from Galveston Bay, Texas.
On this Juneteenth, I hope we can celebrate Freedom (I use this term loosely and personally as a black person). Freedom we’re longing for, Freedom we lost, and the Freedom we live for.
Most of all- the Freedom we have that we don’t have to wait for any government to grant us.
Black people do count. Indigenous people do count. Palestinians do count. Cubans do count…
Local Juneteenth events and resources:
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