BLACKS AND JUNETEENTH DAY

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The celebration of Blacks emancipation has become known as Juneteenth day. Understanding the importance of the holiday means knowing your history.

By Bolling Smith

On June 19th, 1865, Major General Gordon Granger proclaimed the freedom for slaves across America. He and his army would march to Galveston, Texas to let the last remaining slaves know that they were free.

This proclamation would begin the next chapter in Black people’s lives as they were finally able to move without punishment, pursue freedom without fear, and begin to build their families back without being torn apart.

Understand that for 300 years prior to June 19th, 1865, Blacks were ripped from their mother land, stolen, and shipped across the sea to work as 3/5 a person, until death. They were not allowed to read or write, marry, or have families of their own. If they were brought together, they were split up, sold to different plantations, and lived in horrible conditions until they died from being overworked.

This brutal life went on for over 300 years without pause. It only started to get better as the Northern states started to suffer financially from all the free labor that the south benefited from while using slaves to work on the farms.

The United States Civil War was a battle over free labor. America wanted to grow west, but there was a conversation as to how the country would do that. They could either grow west as a slave country, using free labor to do it, or they could grow west and eliminate slavery from the country.

The south wanted to keep their slaves and the north wanted to maintain that slavery was not needed. Hence the beginning of the civil war. The civil was between the democrats, who wanted to keep slavery, and the republicans, who wanted to eliminate slavery.

Blacks overwhelmingly voted republican at the time because it meant a life without governmental interference. The republican platform allowed free will, free movement around the country and limited involvement from the government to do so.

As the Civil War loomed on Black men by the thousands joined in the fight to end slavery. The walk to Galveston took several months, but it was the Black section of the Army that greeted the slaves to announce their freedom.

Life After The Emancipation Proclomation

After it became law that Blacks were free, white southerners needed a new way to strike fear into people. The birth of the Klu Klux Klan happened on December 24th, 1865. Six Confederate veterans, meeting in Pulaski, Tennessee, formed a secret society that they called the Ku Klux Klan. The name combines the Greek word for circle (kyklos) with the Gaelic word clan. In the aftermath of the Civil War, the KKK quickly morphed from a social fraternity to a violent group that sought to push back against key reconstruction policies championed by radical republicans in congress policies that for the first time enfranchised former African American slaves.

Blacks Switch Parties

The election of Roosevelt in 1932 marked the beginning of a change. He got 71 percent of the black vote for president in 1936 and did nearly that well in the next two elections, according to historical figures kept by the Joint Center for Political and Economic Studies. But even then, the number of blacks identifying themselves as Republicans was about

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