INPERSPECTIVE Freedom(?) JUNET EENTH
American
The Juneteenth Flag
In the colors of the U.S. flag, the star and burst represent a New Beginning, after 246 years.
(The image calls to mind the lyric of “Lift Ev’ry Voice”: “Out from the gloomy past, till now we stand at last Where the white gleam of our bright star is cast.”)
The Juneteenth flag was created in 1977 by activist Ben Haith, founder of the National Juneteenth Celebration Foundation, with the help of illustrator Lisa Jeanna Graf.
“Until All of Us Are Free, None of Us Is Free.”
NOTES ON THE MEANING OF JUNETEENTH TODAY
Compiled by Dinizulu Gene Tinnie Miami, Florida
‘LAND ACKNOWLEDGMENT’
Land and History are one and the same thing, known by two different names, much like matter and energy. The geography of the land we live on shapes our lives, cultural practices, and the history that we make, while the human presence, like winds, waters, glaciers, earthquakes, and volcanoes, is a natural force that shapes the land.
As in timeless traditions, we begin all celebrations, observances, commemorations, and other gatherings as we must, by acknowledging our Mother Earth, by honoring the land, and by giving thanks to the Indigenous Ancestors of these lands for their thousands of years of wise stewardship of it, so that it continues to nurture and sustain us today.
Because this land does sustain us, we are able to invoke the Blessings of the Creator and of all of our Ancestors and ask their Guidance in our deliberations so that we might make wise and harmonious decisions during our own brief passage through this physical life.
So today, we begin with Giving Thanks for this gift of life, of time, of heartbeats to be well spent.
We Give Thanks for the unique Blessings of Life on Turtle Island, as North America is known, and on this Florida peninsula with all of the rich social and natural history that has made it, and us, the land and people we know today.
We Give Thanks for the space we occupy, the furnishings and the materials from which they have been made.
We Give Thanks to and for the trees, the “Standing People,” as they are known in many Indigenous American languages, for providing us with the oxygen we need, and even for providing the paper on which these pages of information are printed, with the prayer that what is shared here is worthy of that gift.
And we Give Thanks for this Gathering, for the presence of friends old and new and for all that we may gain from this moment, and from the physical and spiritual nourishment that we will share.
WHAT IS JUNETEENTH?
June 19, shortened over time to “Juneteenth,” celebrates the anniversary of that date in 1865 when the last of the enslaved population, in East Texas, received official word that legalized slavery in the United States was over. The end of slavery did not become an actual reality until there was no longer a single enslaved person in the country.
Thus the day embodies the wisdom of the proverb, “Until all of us are free, none of us is free.”
On that day General Order no. 3 (below) was issued by Union General Gordon Granger at Ashton Villa upon arriving at Galveston, Texas, over a month after the formal end of the American Civil War and two years after the original issuance of the Emancipation Proclamation.
Head Quarters District of Texas Galveston Texas June 19th 1865.
General Orders No. 3.
The people of Texas are informed that, in accordance with a proclamation from the Executive of the United States, all slaves are free. This involves an absolute equality of personal rights and rights of property between former masters and slaves, and the connection heretofore existing between them becomes that between employer and hired labor.
The freedmen are advised to remain quietly at their present homes and work for wages. They are informed that they will not be allowed to collect at military posts and that they will not be supported in idleness either there or elsewhere.
By order of Major General Granger
[Recorded by] F.W. Emery
Major A.A. [Assistant Adjutant] Genl.
The enslaved people of East Texas were the last in the former Confederate states to receive the word that the war was over, and that the Emancipation Proclamation had made them free. Only with their freedom could it be said that slavery had truly ended.
Legalized slavery had ended, but had freedom been gained? Juneteenth connects us to this uncertain question and the joys and challenges faced by those Ancestors as news spread from that day.
PRELUDES TO JUNETEENTH IN FLORIDA
I. BEFORE THE PROCLAMATION
A. The District of Columbia Compensated Emancipation Act of 1862
On April 16, 1862*, President Abraham Lincoln signed a bill ending slavery in the District of Columbia. Passage of this law came 8½ months before President Lincoln issued his Emancipation Proclamation (in December, to take effect on January 1, 1863).
The Act brought to a conclusion decades of agitation aimed at ending what antislavery advocates called “the national shame” of slavery in the nation’s capital.
It provided for immediate emancipation, compensation to former owners who were loyal to the Union of up to $300 for each freed slave, voluntary colonization of former “slaves” to locations outside the United States, and payments of up to $100 for each person choosing emigration.
Over the next nine months, the Board of Commissioners appointed to administer the act approved 930 petitions, completely or in part, from former owners for the freedom of 2,989 former “slaves.”
(At $300 each, that would come to a government payout of close to $900,000 in taxpayers’ funds as reparations to slaveholders. This followed the same pattern as Emancipation throughout the British dominions in 1834, and the forced payment of reparations to France by Haiti after the success of the Revolution there: an insurmountable debt burden that lasted almost two centuries, from which the country has yet to recover. This is the subject of a recent series of investigative articles by The New York Times. The role of rewarding former slaveholders and their descendants in creating present-day fortunes and vast disparities in material wealth, both within the colonizing countries and between thoose and other countries today, is rarely if ever discussed in classrooms, textbooks, news or popular culture.)
*Note that on April 14, 1865, five days after the Confederate surrender on April 9, Abraham Lincoln was shot, and died on April 15 of that year. He did not live to see Juneteenth.
B. ‘Watch Night’
Even with the slow means of transportation and communication available at the time, word spread rapidly about the Emancipation Proclamation, and, fully understanding its limitations, African Americans, enslaved and free, spent a prayerful “Watch Night” on New Year’s eve of 1862, to see what the effect of the Proclamation would actually be after it took effect on January 1. Would enslaved people actually be set free in the “states that were in rebellion” (and only those, and only if the Union forces took control to enforce the edict)?
That tradition continues to this day, where in many Black churches around the nation, New Year’s eve is still observed as Watch Night.
PRELUDES
(continued)
II. EMANCIPATION IN FLORIDA
Throughout modern American history (i.e. the era of Ruropean colonization and its aftermath), the Florida peninsula has often been at the cutting edge of trends politicalthat would later become national. This is where the European explorers made their first landfall in North America in 1513 (almost a century before the first English arrivals in what is now Virginia), under the command of Juan Ponce de Leon, who was accompanied by West African-born Spanish “conquistador” Juan Garrido, who would outlive Ponce, explore much of the continent, and become credited with being the first person to plant and grow wheat in the Americas.
A.THE FIRST EMANCIPATION CELEBRATION
Evidence suggests that the very first Emancipation celebration in the nation took place on January 29, 1863, in the southernmost city of Key West, Florida, only weeks after the Emancipation Proclamation went into effect on New Year’s Day. 1863. Key West had remained under Union control throughout the war, even though Florida had seceded, and was one of the “states in rebellion.” Consequently, those who had been enslaved in Key West were among the first to be legally free, and their celebration is described in lurid detail by a clearly racist and pro-slavery correspondent of the New York Herald, which published the article as it is reproduced below (with the “n-word” edited as shown).
New York Herald, February 11, 1863, page 8 [back page]
THE NEGRO EMANCIPATION JUBILEE¹
Key West, Jan. 29, 1863. [from the Herald correspondent in Key West] Negro Celebration in Key West in Honor of the Proclamation – the Parade and Its Commander – How It Was Received by the Population – The Ladies of Color and Their Appearance
The n-----s have had to-day a grand celebration in honor of obtaining their freedom, by virtue of the President’s proclamation, in which Key West was not excepted, but Norfolk and New Orleans were. The celebration consisted first of a parade, and ended with a grand dinner at the barracoons.2 The parade was the great feature of the day. It consisted of about two hundred and fifty he-n------s, of all sizes, ages and complexions, marching in columns of twos, with proper officers. They were commanded by “Sandy,”3 a venerable n----r of huge proportions, formerly the property of Mr. Baldwin, of this place. It was a matter of doubt for some time before Mr. Baldwin left Key West – says the oldest inhabitant – if he belonged to Sandy or Sandy belonged to him. Sandy to-day felt his importance. He was attired in a full suit of black, a sash and rosette on his breast of enormous size and of the most gaudy colors; he had suspended to his side a cavalry sabre and wore an army fatigue cap. His martial bearing and the resemblance of his foot to that of a scrubbing brush, with his leg for a handle were remarked on every side.4 All conceivable costumes could have been found in the procession, and all shades of color, from the light straw, showing only a slight “lick of the tar brush,” to the blackest ebony. As the procession moved through the streets it was flanked on either side by a crowd of wenches, dressed in their best attire and presenting the appearance of a walking rainbow, and the number of n-----r children in advance of and following the procession showed the African race to be largely on the increase. As they marched on, cheers were given over and over again, for Mr. Ferguson, Captain Curtis and other prominent abolitionists of Key West, and they finally brought up at the Baptist church, where services were performed. The darkeys were not unmolested in their march. They were pelted with stones on several parts of the route, basins of dirty water were emptied upon their devoted heads; several were knocked down, and the American flag, with which they were marching, was taken from them and the staff broken over the head of the bearer. No serious outbreak occurred, but there would have been had not the provost guard been out in force. Not one person among those who have heretofore borne the
Key West Emancipation (cotinued)
reputation of being disloyal interfered in any manner with the celebration. The dinner, I understand, gives every promise of being a grand affair; but not being among those favored with an invitation, I shall have to imagine all that will be said and done on the occasion. It is a most fortunate occurrence for all concerned, but especially for the whitewashed n-----s – i.e., the abolitionists – that the thermometer to-day was as low as fifty-two degrees – six degrees lower than it has previously been this winter. Had it been an ordinary hot day the atmosphere in the neighborhood of the procession and within the barracoons would have been unbearable.
Source:https://chroniclingamerica.loc.gov/lccn/sn83030313/1863-02-11/ed-1/seq-8/ NOTES:
1.We are much indebted to archaeologist Dr. Corey Malcom of the Mel Fisher Maritime Museum for finding this article.
2.The “barracoons” refer to the hastily but well-built structures which housed the 1,432 Africans brought into Key West from three captured slave ships three years earlier, in 1860.
3.This refers to Mr. Sandy Cornish, one of Key West’s most prominent and prosperous citizens, and a co-founder of historic Cornish Memorial A.M.E. Zion Church, named in his memory.
4.This is one of the lasting effects of one of the most spectacular and horrific cases of resistance in the history of American slavery, which was Mr. Cornish’s famous public self-mutilation years earlier in North Florida (after a house fire destroyed his freedom papers and he was captured by “slave catchers”) in order to escape re-enslavement by making himself unfit for sale, including chopping off fingers and cutting his Achilles tendon with a hatchet (accounting for his “scrubbing brush” gait). His wife would sew his fingers back on with needle and thread.
B.EMANCIPATION DAY IN FLORIDA: MAY 20, 1865
“Union Brigadier General Edward M. McCook arrived in Tallahassee to receive the surrender of Florida’s Confederate troops on May 10th. On May 20th, McCook formally announced President Lincoln’s Emancipation Proclamation from the steps of the Knott House, effectively ending slavery in the state.”
FLORIDA ‘MAY-TEENTH’ NOTES
Although the Proclamation legally took effect as early as January 1, 1863, more than two years earlier, the end of slavery could not become a reality until it was enforced by Union troops, as it was in Key West (see above). And this is effectively what happened with General McCook’s arrival and announcement. Emancipation Day continues to be a particularly strong and meaningful observance in Florida, especially in the region of North Florida surrounding Tallahassee, keeping alive the spirit of newfound freedom that Ancestral generations felt on that spring day 157 years ago.
1.A Debate about Recognition
Because of this powerful tradition, many who have been celebrating Florida’s Emancipation Day for generations feel that it, rather than Juneteenth in Texas, should be the major focus of the state’s Remembrance (and funding), but there seems to be a growing recognition of the value of celebrating “both-and” rather than “either-or.” Why should we be limited? Emancipation Day in Florida was equally as important for the people of this state, especially the formerly enslaved, as June 19 would be in Texas, but the date in Texas had the powerful symbolism of marking the true end of legalized slavery in the entire nation.
Florida ‘May-teenth’ Notes (continued)
2.‘Connecting Dots’ A
It is not to be overlooked that such lively observances of anniversaries are also a continuation of timeless Ancestral wisdom and traditions, as such dates represent rhythmic recurrences of cosmic planetary alignments, which connect us to all past and future occurrences that happen with each such case. “The past is present; the future is now.” In this spirit, we also note other significant anniversaries during this week in May:
In our traditional wisdom, nothing in the universe is unconnected, especially occurrences on the same date in the past, present, and future:
•May 17, 1954: US Supreme Court hands down its Brown vs. Board of Education of Topeka, KS Decision, striking down racial segregation in schools as unconstitutional, opening the way for all segregation laws in the South to be challenged by the Civil Rights movement.
•May 17, 1980: Beginning of a widespread rebellion in Miami’s Black neighborhoods after an all-White, all-male jury in Tampa acquits the police officers who murdered insurance agent Arthur McDuffie a few days before Christmas the year before.
•May 18, 1804: Haitian Flag Day, commemorating the creation of the Haitian flag in 1804 by Jean Jacques Dessalines (Janjak Desaline), who tore out the white middle section of the French tricolor flag, and had the blue and red sewn together by a woman named Catherine Flon. The success of the Haitian Revolution would inspire freedom movements throughout the hemisphere.
•May 19, 1925: Birthdate of Malcolm X, El Hajj Malik El-Shabazz / Black Solidarity Day. Quotable quote: “I’m for truth, no matter who tells it. I’m for justice, no matter who it is for or against. I’m a human being, first and foremost, and as such I’m for whoever and whatever benefits humanity as a whole.”
•MAY 20
1861: Kentucky proclaims its neutrality in the Civil War.
1861: North Carolina becomes the 11th state to secede.
1862: In response to the secession of Southern States, and to encourage settlement of the West, Abraham Lincoln signs the Homestead Act, granting 160 acres of “public land” at virtually no cost to those who live on and cultivate it for 5 years, totaling 270 million acres of land, with no regard for the lives, rights, or presence of Indigenous First Nations peoples who inhabited the country for millennia.
1961: In Montgomery Alabama, police allow a racist mob to attack Freedom Riders, who were seeking desegregation of interstate public transportation.
FREEDOM DAY CELEBRATION IN DELRAY BEACH
THE REALITY OF ‘EMANCIPATION’
“Slavery didn’t end in 1865, it just evolved.” – Bryan Stevenson
The famously amoral and pragmatic political theoretician of his time, Niccolò Machiavelli, who represented the rising class of city merchants and bankers against the Old Order of monarchies and aristocracies, is probably best remembered for his advice to those who seek to gain and keep power that whatever it took to gain power is what it will take to keep it. The United States, particularly the wealthiest class, “required” slavery – and the fabulous profits it produced, from both unpaid forced labor and the lucrative commerce in human beings – to acquire the power, privilege, and status that continue today. It should therefore be no surprise that they would seek to maintain slavery by other names – sharecropping, migrant labor, prison sentences, and even, in modern times, such subtle form as student loan debt – in order to keep their positions.
The True Meaning of Juneteenth
It can be said in fairness that the greatest and truest value in the observance of Juneteenth, or May 20, or any other day associated with Emancipation is the opportunity that these days provide for us to set aside time to reflect on our Ancestral generations of enslaved people, and what it actually must have meant to them to hear these formal announcements that their ordeal as persons being “owned” by others, the only life they had ever known, was finally over, after 246 years. Their legal enslavement had ended (at least as long as there were Union troops present to enforce that pronouncement), but what actually followed was not freedom but an uncertain and precarious limbo. The end of slavery did not mean that they now had rights, opportunities, or access to vital resources for survival and sustainability.
‘Connecting Dots’ B: A WEEK IN JUNE
14th 1845 Birth of Gen. Antonio Maceo y Grajales, El Titan de Bronce (“The Bronze Titan”), distinguished military leader and hero of the Cuban independence struggle.
15th 1923 William “Gray Eye” Simmons and Roy (or Robert) Gaines are lynched in southern Miami-Dade County, FL.
16th 1943 Cellos Harrison lynched, Marianna, Florida.
18th 1452 Pope Nicholas V issues the Papal Bull Dum Diversas (“Until Different,” or “until further notice”), 40 years before Columbus crosses the Atlantic authorizing King Alfonso of Portugal to invade and claim foreign lands and to subjugate and enslave all non-Christian peoples. Future European explorers would take this as moral authority to invade countries and exterminate or enslave the inhabitants.
19th 1865 “JUNETEENTH,” last of U.S. enslaved African American population freed, in East Texas, more than 2½ years after the Emancipation Proclamation, and two months after the surrender of General Lee ended the Civil War on April 9.
1963 President John F. Kennedy sends Civil Rights Bill to Congress.
AFTER JUNETEENTH
For all of the significance of June 19, 1865 in east Texas as the symbolic end of legalized slavery in the U.S., it is important to note that this was NOT the end of actual slavery: We are reminded that there were “Border States” that had not seceded from the Union, and therefore were not covered by the Emancipation Proclamation, and did allow slavery to continue after Juneteenth. The 13th Amendment, abolishing slavery, was passed by Congress on January 31, 1865, and was duly ratified by three-fourths of states by December 6, thus marking the actual end of legalized slavery as Federal law. (The border state of Delaware did not vote for ratification until February 12 (Lincoln’s birthdate), 1901, and Kentucky never voted for ratification of it.)
A Fate Worse than Slavery
Ominously, for example, it is reasonable to consider, in the nature of things, that news of the Confederate surrender and the end of the war reached the enslaved population of east Texas well before the arrival of General Grainger, but it meant nothing unless there were federal troops to enforce the Proclamation. By the same token, the news would also have reached the slaveholders, leading to reports, yet to be verified by research and genuine truth-seeking, that more than a few of these “owners,” seeing what was to come, having no interest or desire to see their former “property” become free and equal citizens, possibly even competing with them, decided to simply murder the enslaved persons in their care. Did this happen? Could it have happened? The historical record of the country speaks for itself.
What is even more certain and is well documented is the fate of many of the enslaved who survived Emancipation, in accordance with the 13th Amendment with its fateful (and often fatal) legal loophole: “Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude, except as a punishment for crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted, shall exist within the United States...” This led, as the record shows, to a rash of arbitrary arrests and convictions of Black men (mostly), who then became part of the notorious Convict Leasing System, providing unpaid forced labor to the lessees under conditions that were even worse than slavery itself, because now there were not even “owners” who cared whether these newly enslaved-byanother-name workers lived or died or got sick or injured. Slavery was back, with a vengeance.
Alleged arbitrary killings before the word of Emancipation ever reached the enslaved, and the death trap of Convict Leasing so soon after it became law – very notably only applying to the states of the defeated Confederacy – would be only the beginning of the newly freed population’s, and nation’s, new troubles following the end of the Civil War. Having lost that conflict, Southern racists launched a rampage of violence and terrorism against African Americans, with riots, massacres, murder and mayhem, beatings, property destruction, and other means of attempted intimidation to maintain “White Supremacy.” They would be aided and abetted in this anti-freedom cause by the fateful compromise that gave the contested presidential election of 1876 to Rutherford B. Hayes, in exchange for the withdrawal of Federal troops from the South, opening the way for even more rampant terrorism in the name of “redemption,” culminating in the US Supreme Court Plessy v. Ferguson Decision in 1896. This judgment sanctioned Jim Crow segregation, and an era of White Supremacist triumphalism, during which many of today’s controversial memorials and monuments to Confederate heroes were erected.
By the 1920s, amidst widespread lynchings and anti-Black “race riots” around the nation, there was a full resurgence of the Ku Klux Klan which in Miami could even win first prize for its Orange Bowl Parade float in 1923 as a wholesome community organization, to which any number of police officers and elected officials belonged.
THE LEGACY OF EMANCIPATION
The many horrors that added to the sudden confusion and uncertainty following Juneteenth serve as reminder that Emancipation is as much of a process and a journey as it is product or a final destination.
Realizing this does not make the Emancipation that was celebrated on May 20 or June 19, for example, any less important. In fact, on the contrary, this is precisely the perspective we need to fully appreciate what those Ancestors faced when they received the news that after 246 years, the full nightmare of legal slavery in this country was finally over, for all that was worth.
The late Dr. Maya Angelou reminded us of the power of language, to inform, or to obfuscate, pointing out how the word “slavery” has been used for so long and so frequently that we can easily lose sight of all of the horrors that the word embodied for the day-to-day existence of enslaved persons, from morning to night, and in the night as well: the abuses, the violence, the rapes, the mutilations and tortures, and nothing less than the actual theft of fellow human beings’ lives and livelihoods.
This is not just a simple story of Black and White, or of perpetrators and victims. The race that suffered most from these centuries of genocide, slavery, and colonization was the HUMAN race.
An Empowering Inheritance
That is what makes Emancipation ultimately an empowering story. It is a story of the indomitability of the human spirit and of how human beings, against all odds, found ways to be undaunted by and to rise above all of the pathology, fear, greed and hatred, to preserve Ancestral knowledge and wisdom, and to live, laugh, and love, and give life to future generations who would have opportunities that those foreparents themselves could hardly imagine to be possible.
It must not be forgotten that in the immediate aftermath of Emancipation, the formerly enslaved people “hit the ground running” in many ways, especially to address their two highest priorities: finding scattered family members who had been sold away, and to acquire literacy and education. In the earliest years of Reconstruction, many competent leaders were elected to local, state, and national office.
In South Carolina, for example, African American leadership was instrumental in establishing the model of today’s public school systems, to provide free, public education to ALL children. South Carolina would also be where formerly enslaved people established Decoration Day, honoring the burial place of Union soldiers, which would become today’s Memorial Day. Formerly enslaved craftspersons and artisans found ways to establish businesses. Black families established farms and raised livestock. Self-help organizations established during slavery now flourished anew and grew.
Even in the face of the rising tide of reactionary racism and terrorism, with Northern complicity, that brought Reconstruction to an end the descendants of the formerly enslaved, just as their Ancestors did, made practical accommodations to their plight, but remained undaunted in their resolve to survive and thrive, as it is the birthright of every human being to do. By the early 1900s, when White Supremacy was celebrating its triumphs in suppressing Black voting power and economic success, the New Negro Movement, with slogans like “The New Negro Has No Fear,” was turning forced segregation into independence wherever possible, and finding innovative ways to succeed which would ultimately benefit the entire nation.
JUNETEENTH’S ROCKY ROAD
It is in their collective resolve to live and to affirm their humanity that the enslaved were keenly aware of the value of every step toward freedom, no matter how small. If a Union general ceremonially reading a piece of paper that says that the war was over and that they were free proved not to be all that it promised, it was valuable for whatever it did offer which made that day and all the days to come better than the day before and the ones before it.
The true value and importance of observing these Emancipation Days, on whatever date, is that they provide us with occasions, with cosmic connections to real past events, for us to honor those Ancestral spirits and ask their Guidance as we pause to contemplate the strange situation that they suddenly found themselves in, neither slave nor free, thrown into an uncertain limbo that was slightly different in every location, and in which they would “make a way out of no way” to create a better world.
It is not to be forgotten that Emancipation itself was greatly helped by Abolitionists, allies, and sympathizers, but was brought about primarily by the resolve and resistance of enslaved people, who made slavery an untenable institution, even if it took centuries to do so.
It Was Not Always This Positive
It is revealing that a date as significant as Juneteenth did not become an official state holiday in Texas until 1980, 115 years after Gen. Granger’s announcement, although it had been observed unofficially, like Emancipation Day in Florida, and “Watch Night” in many states, by the African American population practically since its origin. Non-recognition by government and the wider community of this as a celebration of HUMAN freedom was a sign of continued racism and suppression of Black history and heritage.
However, over time, the Juneteenth holiday would come to be criticized, particularly in the period of rising Black consciousness following the Civil Rights Movement. It became disparaged as “just another day off for drinking and cooking barbecue,” or as “a day when other people told us that we are supposed to be free, on their terms.”
It is therefore revealing that our collective consciouness has continued to rise, so that we today, as a people and as a nation with a stronger sense of shared history and shared destiny, are now fully embracing Juneteenth – and Emancipation Days in Florida and other states – for their true meanng as opportunities for present generations to connect with the ones before us, whose legacies have shaped so much of our lives, and with the generations yet to come, who will benefit from the legacy that we make of these remembrances.
Looking Ahead
Emancipation, we now recognize, is not a past event but a present process, still ongoing. It is not merely a holiday observance but a liberation from the prison of colonizing history to create a better, more harmonious way of living in our own challenging time. It is time to redefine our nation and see with fresh eyes that there are no unimportant babies born, no lives that are disposable, no face that is not the face of Creation. In four years, we will be observing “America 250,” the semiquincentennial of 1776. But American history did not begin on that date, nor 1619, nor 1492, but is the history of this land since its beginning, including everyone and everything that has ever lived upon it, and, as an African proverb asks, “What thing in the universe is not living?”
REMEMBERING
Stony the road we trod, bitter the chast’ning rod, Felt in the days when hope unborn had died; Yet with a steady beat, have not our weary feet, Come to the place for which our fathers sighed?
We have come over a way that with tears has been watered, We have come, treading our path through the blood of the slaughtered; Out from the gloomy past, till now we stand at last Where the white gleam of our bright star is cast.
–“Lift Ev’ry Voice and Sing” (Second Stanza)
Lyrics by James Weldon Johnson
Music by J. Rosamond Johnson
