JUNETEENTH AND JULY 4: AMERICA’S INDEPENDENCE AS A NATION – AFRICAN AMERICAN INDEPENDENCE AS A PEOPLE

The United States just celebrated its 244^th birthday. It did so amidst calls that the country establish a federal holiday that would fall on June 19 or Juneteenth. Such a holiday would

mark a major milestone in American history and commemorate the day when federal troops arrived in Galveston, Texas on June 19, 1865, to take control of the state and inform the formerly enslaved population they had been freed by President

Lincoln’s Emancipation Proclamation on January 1, 1863. Adoption of the 13^th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution followed later in 1865.

Though every state except Hawaii, North Dakota, and South Dakota now recognize Juneteenth in some way, it appears many Americans gained their first understanding of Juneteenth this year. Efforts have begun in Congress that would make it a federal holiday. We think that effort worthwhile, especially when juxtaposed with the fact the country celebrates its independence 15 days later. 

Raising Public Awareness

Many Americans never heard of Juneteenth until this year when protests erupted

concerning President Trump’s plan for holding on June 19^th in Tulsa his first rally since the coronavirus pandemic began. Trump bowed to pressure and moved the rally to June 20.

Trump Rally, Tulsa, OK June 20, 2020

Formerly enslaved people began commemorating June 19 as Juneteenth with activities like picnics and public readings of the proclamation. At first, it was a regional holiday, celebrated mostly in Texas. The custom spread across the South. Juneteenth celebrations grew in popularity in the 1970s, but many Americans knew little of the day or its significance until this year and the Trump controversy.

Rob, for example, didn’t study Juneteenth in school. He got sketchy information in his early teens from his grandmother but learned the details only after moving to Texas as an adult in 1981. Henry heard about it from family, but got the whole story, “probably” in a junior high history class. Woodson isn’t sure when he learned of it, but thinks his mother, something of a black history buff, taught him the story in grade school in connection with black history month.          

Why We Think This Is important

The Juneteenth story reminds us that even black people didn’t know slavery was over until more than two years after Lincoln signed

the Emancipation Proclamation, two years during which abuse and mistreatment of African Americans as chattel continued. In fact, arguably, we’re still fighting the Civil War and America should never forget this story, lest

we repeat it. Boston College history professor Heather Cox Richardson forcefully presents that contention in her new book, How the South Won the Civil War: Oligarchy, Democracy, and the Continuing Fight for the Soul of America. Battles over the Confederate flag and monuments to Confederate officers just highlight the point. 

                    

Having Juneteenth as a recognized federal holiday could help remind us of the history.

Too often we forget our national horrors. Grim reminders of slavery’s dark stain on America’s story reside at the African American History and Culture Museum and at America’s Black Holocaust Museum. The webpage for that museum describes its purpose as “interpret[ing] the African American experience in the United States as an ongoing holocaust from the time of captivity in Africa to the present day.” The museum

chronicles the deaths of 12.5 million African men, women, youth, and children who died as a result of their capture, voyage, and enslavement as part of the Triangular Slave Trade. Africans, fortunate enough to survive the voyage, still endured beatings, maiming, lynching, and rape. If we are not to repeat the grave mistakes of the past, we must

Scars from beatings

understand the scars slavery left and feel the joy that accompanied its legal end. In a March 7, 2015, speech at the Edmund Pettus Bridge in Alabama celebrating the 50^th anniversary of Bloody Sunday, President Obama warned that “…this nation’s racial history still casts its long shadow upon us.”

                           

Symbols matter, particularly in a democracy. A healthy debate about whether the nation should recognize the importance – symbolic and real – of emancipation can only contribute to the developing, robust national discussion on racial

Collage of some of the unarmed blacks killed by police

reconciliation. Millions of Americans took to the streets and protested police killings of unarmed black men and women like George Floyd and Breonna Taylor. Millions of Americans are now engaged in conversations about how we resolve our racial discord. Where declaring a race free fits into the process of forming a true democracy merits being part of that discussion.

And the cost?

Federal holidays cost money. Some industries

take a hit, but holiday shopping fuels others. Foes of the Martin Luther King, Jr. national holiday for a time made cost the centerpiece of their opposition. Some will oppose making Juneteenth a national holiday based on economics.

The cost issue matters and Congress should evaluate it during the debate. When considering that, legislators must keep in mind what the country stands for.  Adding a

Juneteenth holiday could help heal our land. The protests show Americans of many colors believe race discrimination, particularly in policing, remains a real concern. They have called attention to things

we must address. If adding a holiday celebrating the end of a brutal chapter in our history helps with healing a problem the protesters have identified, perhaps we should pay that cost.

Hopefully, no one will see adding a Juneteenth holiday as competition for the Fourth of July. Celebrating our decision to tear ourselves from the tyranny of a king and our decision to emancipate a race are far from mutually exclusive.               

CIVIL UNREST OR REVOLUTION?: GOING DEEPER

Our June 22, 2020, post explored whether the uprising we’ve seen since the May 25 murder of 46-year-old George Floyd by a Minneapolis police officer differs from previous civil rights

protests. We examined competing police reform measures and considered political calculations that may affect proposed legislation.

Now we explore broader questions about the same topic. Are we witnessing civil unrest that

subsides once emotions die down or real revolution that leads to systemic societal changes? People ask because many aspects of this look different, certainly than the 1960s civil rights protests the three of us witnessed in our formative years. We start with some basics.

Multi-ethnic sacrifice

The civil rights struggle in America has always been diverse and multi-ethnic.

Consider the lost lives of Viola Liuzzo, Reverend James Reeb, Andrew Goodman, and Michael Schwerner, four white people killed while doing civil rights work in the South. Viola Liuzzo, a Detroit housewife, went to Alabama in 1965 to help with Martin Luther King’s voter registration campaign. As she drove marchers between Selma and Montgomery on March 25, four Ku Klux

Klansmen shot and killed her. Southern resisters attacked and killed Reeb, a Unitarian minister from Boston, in Selma two

weeks earlier. A Klan-led mob murdered Goodman and Schwerner, along with black Mississippian James Cheney, in Neshoba County, Mississippi as they tried registering black voters during the Freedom Summer of 1964.

White people who didn’t make the sacrifice

Luizzo, Reeb, Schwerner, and Goodman made still contributed mightily to the civil rights cause in the 1960s. This isn’t the first time the races have joined forces in the struggle for equality.

A different feel

All that said, some things seem different this time. White participation in the protests following Floyd’s death just looks bigger. In

foreign countries, organic protests erupted in the streets. At a qualitative level, hope has surfaced that whites participating in this round of protests “get it.” White marchers seem invested in the grievances African Americans have with police brutality and systemic racism. White people are talking both with blacks and among each other about racial problems and seem fueled by a sense of responsibility.

Another big difference lies in the availability of social media. Platforms like Twitter,

Facebook, and Instagram mean the voiceless aren’t voiceless anymore. People have more opportunities for expressing themselves. They need worry less about accessing broadcast and print outlets controlled by others. People can speak out knowing many will hear.

Positive involvement of the corporate sector distinguishes what’s happening now from previous protest cycles. Large companies acknowledge they must respond to how their customers view racial justice issues. After consumer pressure, for example, Starbucks changed its policy so employees could wear “Black Lives Matter” shirts.

           

Finally, people hungry for information about racial matters can access more credible writing on the subject now than in the ’60s. More scholars, some black and some white, research and write about racial issues. Popular writers contribute to this growing, robust race discrimination literature. We suggested popular and scholarly works in a recent post concerning the education of white America about race.

Challenges

If this is different, what obstacles could derail the movement and destroy the moment? Revolutions

often have generals – commanders who lead foot soldiers, develop strategy, and direct operations. The 1960s civil rights movement certainly had a supreme commander in Martin Luther King, Jr.  A capable staff

assisted him, led by notables like his Southern Christian Leadership Conference deputy Ralph Abernathy, NAACP Executive Director Roy Wilkins, union stalwart A. Phillip Randolph, and Urban League leader Whitney Young. Ascending figures like Fannie Lou Hamer, John Lewis, and Andrew Young made significant contributions. Such a leadership team isn’t around today.

An argument also exists that protest movements don’t need a general on the order of a Martin Luther King. Eric Hoffer suggested in The True

Believer that mass movements require three elements: (1) readying the ground by those “whose chief claim to excellence is their skill in the use of the spoken or written word,” (2) the temperament and talents of fanatics, and (3) “final consolidation” by practical people of action.

We see elements of such an array forming. Writers like legal scholar Michelle Alexander, author of The New Jim Crow, essayist Ta-Nehisi Coates, and

sociologist Robin Diangelo, who wrote the best-selling White Fragility: Why it’s so Hard for White People to Talk about Racism might serve as Hoffer’s women and “men of words.” Identifying fanatics isn’t easy, but they’re showing themselves. Take, for example, the young people who’ve spearheaded the nationwide Justice for Breonna movement protesting the March shooting death of 26-year-old medical technician Breonna Taylor by police in her home in Louisville, Kentucky during execution of a no-

knock drug case warrant. As for practical people of action, we nominate William Barber, the North Carolina cleric who sometimes functions as the conscience of the nation on equality and fairness issues. Then there’s House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, trying to steer substantive police reform legislation

through Congress. Perhaps she can get help next year from a President Joe Biden and a Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer.

We point out Henry does not accept Hoffer’s concept of “fanatics,” but recognizes the importance in social movements of those with “firm commitment and zeal.” 

We must end with a note of caution. The opposition has its general – the current occupant of the White House – and its chief of staff, Senate Republican leader Mitch McConnell. We need say no more.