Juneteenth: The Second US Independence Day

by Suzanne Hanney

“What to the slave is the Fourth of July?” Frederick Douglass asked in an 1852 speech to the Ladies Anti-Slavery Society of Rochester, N.Y.

“I answer, a day that reveals to him, more than all the other days in the year, the gross injustice and cruelty to which he is the constant victim….your shouts of liberty and equality, [are] hollow mockery; mere bombast, fraud, deception, impiety and hypocrisy—a thin veil to cover up crimes which would disgrace a nation of savages.” Douglass (1818-1895) was a former slave-turned-abolitionist newspaper editor and an orator, the most influential African American of his era.

Juneteenth, on the other hand, marks the actual independence date for the last slaves in the South. A contraction of “June” and “19th,” Juneteenth “marks our country’s second independence day,” according to the National Museum of African American History and Culture, part of the Smithsonian Institution in Washington, D.C. The holiday also epitomizes the path African Americans have trudged in the face of whites who begrudged them freedom.

On June 19, 1865, Gen. Gordon Granger rode into Galveston, Texas, and read aloud General Order No. 3, which began, “The people of Texas are informed that in accordance with a Proclamation from the Executive of the United States, all slaves are free.”

Slaves had been free on paper for more than 2½ years, thanks to Abraham Lincoln’s Emancipation Proclamation of Jan. 1, 1863. But because the Civil War was fought on Confederate soil, the Proclamation couldn’t be enforced until Union troops had conquered all of the South.

Juneteenth became a federal holiday in 2021, although it had long been celebrated in Texas and as a state holiday across the U.S. The Black Lives Matter movement, after the death of George Floyd at the hands of Minneapolis police in 2020, catalyzed efforts of both politicians and individuals to create this federal holiday, the first enacted since Dr Martin Luther King Jr.’s Birthday in 1983.

President Joe Biden signed the Juneteenth National Independence Day Act on Thursday, June 17, 2021, following its approval by a 415-54 vote in the House on Wednesday, the previous day, and a unanimous vote in the Senate on Tuesday. Federal workers observed the holiday on Friday, the day after the ceremony, since Juneteenth was on a Saturday last year.

Group on Emancipation Day, circa 1880s, in Houston's Emancipation Park. Reverend Jack Yates, who led the community purchase of the Park in 1872, is pictured on the far left, and his daughter Sallie Yates dressed in black in the center

Houston Public Library

Juneteenth is a holiday to embrace, President Biden said, because “Great nations don’t ignore their most painful moments. We come to terms with the mistakes we made. And in remembering those moments, we begin to heal and grow stronger.

“The truth is, it’s not – simply not enough just to commemorate Juneteenth. After all, the emancipation of enslaved Black Americans didn’t mark the end of America’s work to deliver on the promise of equality; it only marked the beginning.”

Policies the United States enacts, President Biden said, should put the promise of equality into action. This means combatting racial discrimination in home ownership, bringing more funds to Black entrepreneurs and more research dollars to historically Black universities. The nation must stand for equity in schools, health care, water systems – and it must protect voting rights.

Among those at the signing ceremony were U.S. Rep. Danny K. Davis (D-Chicago), who had offered a resolution to the 109th Congress in 2005 recognizing the significance of Juneteenth Independence Day. His resolution had expressed the same thoughts as Biden: that history “should be regarded as a means for understanding the past and solving the challenges of the future.”

Others at the ceremony were the musician Usher and Opal Lee, “the Grandmother of Juneteenth.” A 94-year-old former teacher, Lee had made symbolic 2½-mile walks every Juneteenth around the U.S. for 40 years to publicize the 2½-year gap between Lincoln’s proclamation and the slaves’ actual freedom.

Opal Lee

opalswalk2dc.com

Between September 2016 and January 2017 at the end of President Barack Obama’s second term, Lee began Opal’s Walk 2 D.C. in order to petition his administration and Congress to grant Juneteenth an official position on the calendar. She traveled the U.S., marching the symbolic 2½ miles in cities that invited her to take part in Juneteenth festivities. “I went to Madison, Wis; Milwaukee, Atlanta, the Carolinas. I was all over the place,” she told Variety.

Sean “Diddy” Combs hosted a conversation with Lee on his Revolt network and helped her gain signatures. According to Variety, Combs called Lee one of the “elders in the tribe that want something done while they’re alive to see that.”

Hip-hop artist/producer/actor Niko Brim marched alongside Lee in Washington, D.C. when she had only 12,000 signatures in early 2020.

When Lee began her journey, her goal was to collect 100,000 signatures on her petition with change.org. She wound up with 1.5 million.

“I think it was ‘enough is enough.’ I think losing that man’s life just pushed us over the edge,” Lee said. “How long must we put up with people being killed in the street like that young man George Floyd?

“It hasn’t been so many years that they stopped having lynchings, but it’s a different kind of lynching. When I think about what our ancestors had to put up with before the Emancipation – before that General Order No. 3 was declared down in Galveston – the situations aren’t that different.”

On June 17, 2021 President Joe Biden signed, with Members of Congress (including Danny K. Davis, far left), the Juneteenth National Independence Day Act at the White House

Evan Vucci/AP

In 1863, Texas newspapers had explained the Emancipation Proclamation. But Texas was part of the Confederacy, and its constitution forbade freeing enslaved people. In addition, since the fall of New Orleans in 1862, planters from Mississippi and Louisiana had been bringing their slaves to Texas to evade the Union Army, according to Henry Louis Gates Jr. on PBS.org, so the Proclamation was ignored until Granger arrived with 2,000 troops.

Granger’s ornate cursive decree freed 250,000 enslaved people in Texas, in addition to those freed earlier by Union troops: about 4 million in all.

The decree continued: “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.”

Some slavers withheld the news of freedom until after the harvest – or until a government agent arrived. A few owners reacted angrily to the news of emancipation and told their slaves to leave immediately, but most did ask the freedmen to stay and work for wages, according to the Texas State Historical Association (TSHA) online.

Most former slaves in the South entered into informal agreements with their former owners, although many requested contracts, which they heard about from Union soldiers. There was little cash in the South in 1865, so sharecropping became the norm, according to historian Ed Ayers on PBS’s "The American Experience: The Civil War and Reconstruction."

Major General Gordon Granger

Library of Congress photo

Former slaves whose loved ones had been sold did not remain at their present homes, but went looking for their families. Still others celebrated – if whites allowed it, according to the TSHA. They dressed up in new clothes, because under slavery, they had only been permitted to wear what their owners gave them. They threw their old rags into rivers.

In Houston, four former slaves – Rev. Jack Yates, Rev. Elias Dibble, Richard Allen and Richard Brock – exercised their new right of property ownership. In 1872, they raised $1,000 to purchase 10 acres where they could host Juneteenth celebrations. In 1916, the open field with a racetrack around its perimeter and an open-air pavilion was donated to the City of Houston.

During the Great Depression, the Public Works Administration constructed a swimming pool, bathhouse and recreation center on what had become known as Emancipation Park. Separated by a freeway from the rest of Houston, the park was neglected by the 1970s.

However, in 2006, neighborhood natives formed the “Friends of Emancipation Park.” The next year, they won protected historic landmark status from the Houston City Council. African American architect Phil Freelon, who also designed the Smithsonian’s National Museum of African American History in Washington, D.C., led a $33 million reconceptualization of the park, completed in 2017.

Emancipation Park is located in Houston’s Third Ward, home to both Beyonce – and George Floyd, who played football at Jack Yates High School. In September 2021, the Yates H.S. football field was renamed in Floyd’s honor.

Group of elderly people on Juneteenth. Photograph by Grace Murray Stephenson of celebrations in Eastwoods Park, Austin, 1900

Austin Public Library

This June 19th, Emancipation Park will host its 150th Juneteenth celebration.

And in Galveston, the Juneteenth Legacy Project (JLP) has unveiled a 5,000-square-foot mural overlooking the site where General Granger issued Order No. 3. The public art installation, “Absolute Equality,” depicts Granger as well as Black troops. Sam Collins, JLP co-chair and National Trust advisor, told the Galveston Daily News that as JLP met with the property owner, local nonprofits and the community, he realized that in telling the full story, the public art piece was repairing the cracked foundation on which America is built.

“No one living today is responsible for the cracks in the foundation or the errors of the past, but as current stewards of our American home, it is our responsibility to do the work to fix the problem in hopes of creating a better future for the next generation.”