Juneteenth - another US Independence Day

Subject: RE: Juneteenth - another US Independence Day
From: Mrrzy
Date: 28 Jun 20 - 09:43 AM

Refresh. This is still an issue, Juneteenth becoming a holiday, not just a barbecue.

Virginia has made it a paid state holiday, as have New York, Pennsylvania and Texas.

Subject: RE: Juneteenth - another US Independence Day
From: Stilly River Sage
Date: 25 Jun 20 - 06:00 PM

Let's focus on the topic - seeing Juneteenth, with all of it's baggage, become an official federal holiday.

Subject: RE: Juneteenth - another US Independence Day
From: Jeri
Date: 25 Jun 20 - 05:36 PM

I gave up trying to have sensible conversations with Trumpers on Facebook.
I think it's time for me to stop here. Not fun, not productive, and it just gives some folks an opportunity to let their bigotry out to play.
So I'm out.

Subject: RE: Juneteenth - another US Independence Day
From: Mossback
Date: 25 Jun 20 - 05:28 PM

Mom, in point of fact, was a slave....Forced labor is a subset of slavery...

Oh yeah? Sez who?

And certainly NOT in the context of this thread.

Subject: RE: Juneteenth - another US Independence Day
From: Jeri
Date: 25 Jun 20 - 05:21 PM

And HER mother was a slave, and her mother's father was a slave, and the rest of her ancestors, until you get to the one or two that were forced to leave their homes, crammed into a ship and brought to another county.

I kinda think if I want to hear more of this shit, I should just listen to a Trump speech.

Subject: RE: Juneteenth - another US Independence Day
From: Mrrzy
Date: 25 Jun 20 - 04:59 PM

Mom, in point of fact, was a slave: forced to work for no pay because she wasn't white enough for the Nazis, or die. Most were worked TO death. She persisted.

Forced labor is a subset of slavery, as is chattel slavery. She wasn't chattel, but I did not claim she was.

Subject: RE: Juneteenth - another US Independence Day
From: mg
Date: 25 Jun 20 - 04:39 PM

Mrrzy..I am not following your logic. If in addition to slavery, they had rape to contend with, and bearing children that resulted (and my ancestors on my mother's side were guilty of something that resulted in me having many cousins from Cameroon) it seems that they would be even more deserving of reparations. Also, it appears that there was a breeding..hate to use this terminology.. program in I think Tazewell, VA and I am related to it. Some very bad characters on my mother's father's side of the family and I have probably not mentioned the worst of it here although I have gone public with it.

Subject: RE: Juneteenth - another US Independence Day
From: Mossback
Date: 25 Jun 20 - 04:35 PM

All the *more* reason why descendants of those rapists shouldn't get reparations.

WTF ???

Subject: RE: Juneteenth - another US Independence Day
From: Stilly River Sage
Date: 25 Jun 20 - 04:34 PM

Really? All the *more* reason why descendants of those rapists shouldn't get reparations. Is this the "sins of the father" visited on the children? You just need to stop and listen for a while, you're digging that hole deeper and deeper.

DC is a second-class citizen as far as representation. It isn't the capital of all other states, it's the plaything of the congress and is victimized over and over by having their initiatives cancelled out by congressional oversight that no states are subject to. Same with the territories. Look at how Trump was able to ignore Puerto Rico after Hurricane Maria, they have so little obligation to be helpful or supportive.

Subject: RE: Juneteenth - another US Independence Day
From: Jeri
Date: 25 Jun 20 - 04:33 PM

All the *more* reason why descendants of those rapists shouldn't get reparations."

Really!? Blaming the victim and the child for the rape!? Way to punish those evil people.

Subject: RE: Juneteenth - another US Independence Day
From: Mrrzy
Date: 25 Jun 20 - 04:26 PM

Sorry about the paywall. I'll get y'all the text.

Of course it was rape. All the *more* reason why descendants of those rapists shouldn't get reparations.

DC should never be a state. It is the capital OF the states. Rezone it so anything federal is DC and anything residential is Maryland or Virginia, OK, but DC can't be a state. Puerto Rico should absolutely be a state. Guam, the US Virgin Islands, any other place where being born there makes you a citizen of the United States, too.

Subject: RE: Juneteenth - another US Independence Day
From: Stilly River Sage
Date: 24 Jun 20 - 10:04 PM

I have a problem with reparations, being that not all darker-than-white-skinned people are descended from taken-from-Africa slaves, and what's worse in this concept is that those who are, are also descended from slave owners. I don't think anyone descended from slave owners should benefit from their ancestors having owned people, even if those other people were also your ancestors.

That is the equivalent of "All Lives Matter." Reparations isn't about money being paid to anyone based upon the color of their skin or even what can be tracked of their ancestry. It's about addressing the inequities that are still formally and informally built into society and cultural and government institutions aimed at non-white citizens. It's about supporting institutions that have been ignored or underfunded for decades or centuries. It's about Juneteenth being a paid federal holiday and getting rid of Columbus Day. It's about making Puerto Rico and Washington, D.C. (both largely dark-skinned populations) states and giving them full rights to the representation and economy of the United States. It's about leveling the playing field for American Samoans and the Chomorro of Guam, The citizens of the US Virgin Islands, the Northern Marianas (all of these places have largely indigenous dark skinned populations, and many of them have ancestors who were impacted by slavery). The US has a lot to answer for.

Subject: RE: Juneteenth - another US Independence Day
From: Donuel
Date: 24 Jun 20 - 09:34 PM

I too experience disappointment but with room for learning about certain distinctions, improvement will come. It is often the case that some folks don't know how they think about some things until they go and write about them. The state of their well being during writing comes into play more than you'd think.
Diplomatically yours,
Donuel.

Mossback, I'd take your class.

Subject: RE: Juneteenth - another US Independence Day
From: Jeri
Date: 24 Jun 20 - 08:20 PM

Sometimes, it's just way too hard trying to talk to folks who don't understand things and are just reacting to that cluelessness. Reparations have to do with Africans brought here as slaves, and then had their rights denied through the years, and it's about society, not individuals.

Subject: RE: Juneteenth - another US Independence Day
From: Mossback
Date: 24 Jun 20 - 06:29 PM

those [Black folks] who are, are also descended from slave owners. I don't think anyone descended from slave owners should benefit from their ancestors having owned people, even if those other people were also your ancestors.

Ahem. "Those Other People" you wish to deny were almost exclusively the children of rape, fer chrissake.

She was in a slave labor concentration camp till the day before her 16th birthday.

No, she was in a forced labor Nazi concentration camp. She was not a chattel slave.

Everybody in fact almost certainly had enslaved ancestors, given that slavery used to be normal and ubiquitous. Got ancestors from anyplace the Romans ever conquered?

In the first instance, not true. In the second, irrelevant and "whataboutism" at is best (worst?)

I'm suprised seriously disappointed you posted this crap.

PS: Your "blicky" has a paywall.

Subject: RE: Juneteenth - another US Independence Day
From: Mrrzy
Date: 24 Jun 20 - 05:08 PM

Hmmm. I thought I made a blicky, too. So here it is.

I have a problem with reparations, being that not all darker-than-white-skinned people are descended from taken-from-Africa slaves, and what's worse in this concept is that those who are, are also descended from slave owners. I don't think anyone descended from slave owners should benefit from their ancestors having owned people, even if those other people were also your ancestors.

Obama mentioned this somewhere.

If we going to pay reparations to *everybody* whose ancestors were enslaved, I'm owed, Mom was a slave during WWII. She was in a slave labor concentration camp till the day before her 16th birthday.

Everybody in fact almost certainly had enslaved ancestors, given that slavery used to be normal and ubiquitous. Got ancestors from anyplace the Romans ever conquered? Should the Italians owe you?

The issue here isn't, or shouldn't be, yesteryear's slavery, but rather the horrible racism of today.

Subject: RE: Juneteenth - another US Independence Day
From: Stilly River Sage
Date: 24 Jun 20 - 04:27 PM

The discussion of reparations has been brought up again, and that ties into slavery which Junteenth is about. If it ever happens, that will add fuel to the celebration. Conversely, I don't think reparations will happen in a world where Juneteenth isn't an official federal holiday.

Subject: RE: Juneteenth - another US Independence Day
From: Mrrzy
Date: 24 Jun 20 - 04:18 PM

Not everything that relates broadly to race is actually relevant to Juneteenth.

However, it may be legal for Obama to be VP:

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-fix/wp/2015/08/06/could-joe-biden-pick-barack-obama-as-his-running-mate-yes-but/

Subject: RE: Juneteenth - another US Independence Day
From: Stilly River Sage
Date: 24 Jun 20 - 12:54 PM

It got moved over here as part of a migration, but it was a bit of a non-sequitur on the other thread also.

Personally, I've thought that Michelle Obama would be a good candidate, but she's too smart to get sucked into that world again.

The whole topic of a man or woman of color on the Democratic presidential ticket is a logical part of a Juneteenth discussion in the year 2020. A look at either how far we've come or how slow we've been to get here.

Subject: RE: Juneteenth - another US Independence Day
From: Jeri
Date: 24 Jun 20 - 12:41 PM

Don, it's not legal. Obama can NOT be VP. Think about primary duties of a VP.
Plus IT HAS NOTHING TO DO WITH JUNETEENTH.

Subject: RE: Juneteenth - another US Independence Day
From: Mrrzy
Date: 24 Jun 20 - 11:47 AM

When I moved to Charlottesville in 1985 for grad school, this was not what I was taught about Juneteenth.

I was told by our freshman orientation person (who also explained things like how to pronounce Rio Rd and Monticello, and that the Corner was actually several blocks) that it celebrated when the last individual slave found out, through word of mouth, that they were free, and in fact had been for years. It had no precise date, and was called Juneteenth, exactly because in point of fact nobody knows precisely when, or where, that was.

There was a Doonesbury strip about this is the '70's, but with no mention that I recall of the word Juneteenth. I think it was Mike's ancestor but it might have been Zonker's. I have tried to google it but not succeeded. Yet.

Subject: Juneteenth - another US Independence Day
From: Stilly River Sage
Date: 23 Jun 20 - 07:05 PM

In 2020 the observation of Juneteenth, June 19, 1865, when slaves in Texas finally learned that they were free, took on greater significance in the immediate aftermath of the George Floyd murder.

12 Things You Might Not Know About Juneteenth
BY Stacy Conradt
June 19, 2018
(Updated: May 27, 2020)

2. There are many theories as to why the Emancipation Proclamation wasn’t enforced in Texas.

News traveled slowly back in those days—it took Confederate soldiers in western Texas more than two months to hear that Robert E. Lee had surrendered at Appomattox. Still, some have struggled to explain the 30-month gap between Lincoln’s proclamation and the enslaved people’s freedom, leading to speculation that some Texans suppressed the announcement. Other theories include that the original messenger was murdered to prevent the information from being relayed or that the federal government purposely delayed the announcement to Texas to get one more cotton harvest out of the enslaved workers. But the real reason is probably that Lincoln's proclamation simply wasn't enforceable in the rebel states before the end of the war.

5. Not all enslaved people were freed instantly.

Texas is a large state, and General Granger's order (and the troops needed to enforce it) were slow to spread. According to historian James Smallwood, many enslavers deliberately suppressed the information until after the harvest, and some beyond that. In July 1867 there were two separate reports of enslaved people being freed, and one report of a Texas horse thief named Alex Simpson whose enslaved people were only freed after his hanging in 1868.

Considering how significant the date, it's sad that it took Texas until 1980 to make it a holiday, and it isn't a paid holiday, it's just a date on the calendar.

Lincoln's Emancipation Proclamation was issued on January 1, 1863. It took until December 6, 1865 to ratify the 13th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution to remove all forms of slavery.

Subject: RE: BS: Juneteenth
From: Donuel
Date: 23 Jun 20 - 03:11 PM

I think the people would be happier and more hopeful in these most desperate times of a need for an unprecedented recovery
with Barak Obama as the VP and Biden as President.
So would the world and our Allies.
Sorry ladies.

Its legal

Subject: RE: BS: Juneteenth
From: mg
Date: 21 Jun 20 - 06:44 PM

drinking gourd. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kjBZEMkmwYA

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kjBZEMkmwYA

Subject: RE: BS: Juneteenth
From: Helen
Date: 21 Jun 20 - 05:14 PM

Yep, not OK then or now. :-)

This might sound callous, but the extent of the shake-up of U.S. society at present due to political, social and health upheavals may actually make it more likely that real change can happen.

When the social norms are firmly fixed it's possible, with persistence and determination, to change little bits here and there but very difficult to make major changes with huge impacts, but when the social fabric is in chaos and people are determined to make major changes, the possibilities for change can be closer to probabilities.

Like the difference between a big solid structure, "set in stone" compared with building blocks ready to be built into a useful structure.

Order out of chaos. Hopefully.

Subject: RE: BS: Juneteenth
From: Stilly River Sage
Date: 21 Jun 20 - 11:57 AM

Juneteenth is not a bland nothing. "Happy" doesn't suit it. It's an important date that, despite what the current despot in the White House thinks, has been on the public radar for a long time. Only now it begins to feel like legislation to make it into a federal holiday will have the teeth to make it happen. Not with this president, but in the next administration.

The first year of the next administration is going to be spent undoing all of those executive orders Trump threw around like confetti, and that same first year or more of the next administration is going to be spent rounding up disaffected former federal employees to come back to the jobs and clean out the appointees who Trump put in to destroy the federal government.

Subject: RE: BS: Juneteenth
From: Helen
Date: 21 Jun 20 - 03:20 AM

Darn! Lost what I was posting half way through.

I am sad and sorry to say I didn't know about Juneteenth until someone posted a video link to a young woman passionately speaking about the need for justice, equality and fairness and she also mentioned the massacre at Tulsa, OK in the 1920's.

A few days later I was shocked to the core to see that your Trumpty-Dumpty was planning to hold his first campaign rally at Tulsa.

Unbelievable!

Subject: RE: BS: Juneteenth
From: Helen
Date: 21 Jun 20 - 03:11 AM

You're gonna need more than a year to fix it all, but given persistence and determination, I think it can be fixed so more power to y'all!

Aussies are protesting too on your behalf and on behalf of the First Nations people here.

Subject: Juneteenth - another US Independence Day
From: Stilly River Sage
Date: 20 Jun 20 - 11:51 AM

The History of Juneteenth, And Why It Is Relevant Today.

AILSA CHANG, HOST:

Rewind the clock about 155 years, and you would find yourself in 1865. And if you were an enslaved man, woman or child in Texas, it was the day that the news of liberation reached your state, more than two years after President Lincoln issued the Emancipation Proclamation. Billy McCray was around 13 years old when Union troops came to Jasper, Texas.

(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)

BILLY MCCRAY: All riding horses, big guns hanging on them and...

MARY LOUISE KELLY, HOST:

What McCray says there is he remembers being impressed by the horses and the cannons. This interview is from 1940. The quality is a little hard to hear, and it includes an offensive word.

(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)

MCCRAY: He said, well, all of you n*****s is all free now.

KELLY: Billy McCray remembering the moment where the man who owned him told him he was free.

CHANG: Now in 2020, this day is called Juneteenth, and it's become a day to commemorate the end of chattel slavery in America.

CHELSEA GOMEZ: Juneteenth is why we speak out. Juneteenth is why we fight and will never stop fighting. Justice cannot be delayed any longer. None of us is free until we are all free. Happy Juneteenth.

CHANG: That is Chelsea Gomez (ph) of Tampa, Fla. She sent us a voice memo today on what Juneteenth means to her.

KELLY: Here in Washington, Morgan Sills (ph) and her friends commemorated Juneteenth by marching toward the Lincoln Memorial.

(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)

UNIDENTIFIED PEOPLE: We must help one another and protect one another.

UNIDENTIFIED PERSON: We have nothing to lose but our chains.

KELLY: Sills is thinking about Juneteenth in the context of these weeks of civil rights protests that have taken place across the nation demanding justice for black Americans killed by police.

MORGAN SILLS: It's always been independence for a group of people who did not have it when the rest of their country was enjoying freedom. Right now more than ever, it's a signal that we are still in this fight.

CHANG: The people who watched the sun rise on June 19, 1865, saw their last sunsets a long time ago. But the events of that day - the ones we commemorate on Juneteenth - are alive in the present, in a system infected with racism and in the calls for a better future. We wanted to learn more about Juneteenth, and so we asked CeLillianne Green to join us. She is a poet and a lawyer and author of the book "A Bridge: The Poetic Primer On African And African American Experiences." Welcome.

CELILLIANNE GREEN: Thank you for having me.

CHANG: So can you just take us back to June 19, 1865? We've already heard a little of what happened, but fill in some more for us. What happened on that day?

GREEN: Well, I like to think that these people who were unexpected to know that that day would come when they would be told that they were free - they had no indication that there had been an Emancipation Proclamation that became effective on January the 1 of 1865.

CHANG: Right.

GREEN: But these people were legally illiterate. And so the general who had to come there to tell them this information had to read them a document called the General Order No. 3 in which he tells them that there has been a proclamation by the executive of the United States - who, at that point, was Abraham Lincoln, who had been assassinated - to let them know that all slaves are free. And I think that that word free is the word that resonated so much in the spirit of who they were as African people who had only known being enslaved.

But the vibrational frequency of the word free seeped into their spirit in a way that we can't even imagine today that brought a feeling of joy, of jubilation, the idea that they could walk and be human beings as God had intended them to be and consistent with the Declaration of Independence, which states that we hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men - all people are created equal, endowed by their creator with unalienable rights to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. And I think in that moment, they felt all of that without even knowing what the Declaration of Independence necessarily said.

CHANG: Yeah.

GREEN: But it was the power of the word freedom that they took with them for the next year, and they created a holiday that they began to celebrate their freedom, their emancipation. On the anniversary of June 19, 1865, they celebrated in 1866. And we can celebrate freedom today because of what they did on that date.

CHANG: I love the way you told that. And these individuals who got word that they were finally free on that day, were they really the last enslaved people to be set free from chattel slavery in America?

GREEN: Well, not exactly because a lot of people have confusion about what the Emancipation Proclamation actually did. It only freed the people who were enslaved in the Confederate States. It did not free people who were in the border states, who were in the Northern states. And the 13th Amendment, which abolished slavery except upon conviction of a crime, was - excuse me - while it was passed in January of 1865, was not ratified until December of 1865. And there were certainly a whole host of activities that this country engaged in as it related to Black people - including the Jim Crow laws, convict leasing - that were forms of slavery by another name as has been written by the author who wrote the book with that title.

CHANG: So given that, why this date, this event? Why choose this day, June 19, to take stock of all of this history?

GREEN: I think we're in a moment in time where we're at a crossroads. And the country has had opportunities before, but 2020, I think, is symbolic of the 20/20 vision, the clarity that the country can have to begin to live into the documents that created it...

CHANG: Right.

GREEN: ...The Declaration of Independence, the Constitution. In fact, the Constitution says that we the people - and what you're seeing now is we the people are in the streets.

CHANG: Well, we will have to end it there. CeLillianne Green, poet and lawyer, thank you so much for joining us.

GREEN: Thank you so much for having me.

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