Juneteenth 2023

JUNETEENTH 2023

by Suzanne Hanney

Chloe Henderson, a clinical coordinator at Rush University Medical Center and a member of its Sunshine Committee, has decorated the conical tree in one patient check-in area with the African colors of red, green and black

Suzanne Hanney

“Juneteenth” is a new national holiday that marks June 19, 1865, the date the last enslaved people were freed, in Texas, 2½ months after the Civil War ended.

Juneteenth means that Chloe Henderson, a clinical coordinator at Rush University Medical Center and a member of its Sunshine Committee, has decorated the conical tree in one patient check-in area with the African colors of red, green and black. The tree changes at least monthly, as a morale-builder for Rush team members and patients alike. Previously, it had been topped with a Mexican sombrero for Cinco de Mayo and festooned with a string of blue plastic gloves for Nurses Week.

Chloe’s research told her the idea of a Juneteenth national holiday gained popularity after the pandemic and the death of George Floyd. She said it reminds us there is still work to do concerning gun and police violence. And she’s pleased to see more Juneteenth flags and parades, whereas in the past, Cinco de Mayo got all the attention.

“It’s being conscious of what it means to you and how it applies to your coworkers,” she said. “You live in a world that is not just you, not just Mexicans – but everyone.”

Juneteenth is a holiday for Americans to embrace, President Joe Biden said during the White House signing ceremony on Thursday, June 17, 2021, 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.”

Juneteenth had long been celebrated in Texas, but the movement for a federal holiday gained momentum from the Black Lives Matter movement and the death of Floyd at the hands

of police in 2020. Among those at the White House signing ceremony was Opal Lee, a 94-year-old former teacher who had made symbolic 2½-mile walks every Juneteenth around the U.S. for 40 years to publicize the 2½-year gap between Abraham Lincoln’s Emancipation Proclamation and the enslaved people’s actual freedom.

Between September 2016 and January 2017 at the end of President Barack Obama’s second term, Lee began “Opal’s Walk 2 DC,” to petition his administration and Congress to grant Juneteenth an official position on the calendar. She made more symbolic walks in Madison and Milwaukee, Wis.; in Atlanta and the Carolinas.

Opal Lee

Marcher with a Black Lives Matter banner protest in Bronzeville on June 2, 2020

Kathleen Hinkel

“I was all over the place,” Lee told Variety. She appeared on Sean “Diddy” Combs’s Revolt Network and marched alongside hip-hop artist/producer/actor Niko Brim in Washington, D.C.

In early 2020, she had only 12,000 signatures. She wound up with 1.5 million.

“I think it was ‘enough was enough,’ she said. “I think losing that man’s life just pushed us over the edge. 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 [Texas] – the situations aren’t that different.”

Union Gen. Gordon Granger’s General Order No. 3 came two months after the Confederate Army’s surrender in the Civil War, because the rebel army had not given up. The Union Army had to fight its way south from the Appomattox, VA, surrender site and then west to Texas.

Moreover, the Texas constitution prohibited granting freedom to enslaved people, so Texans ignored Abraham Lincoln’s Emancipation Proclamation of Jan. 1, 1863—until Gen. Granger arrived with 2,000 troops.

Juneteenth in Texas came to be a time where formerly enslaved people threw away the rags they had been forced to wear in exchange for new clothes. In the Houston area where Beyonce and George Floyd grew up, Blacks even bought a park where they could host annual Juneteenth celebrations. Chicago in the last two years has embraced the same model of food and networking events (see listing, page 12-14).

For me, Juneteenth means the United States is finally coming closer to its words that “all [people] are

created equal” in the Declaration of Independence, celebrated on July 4. But, as Frederick Douglass said, “What, to the slave, is the Fourth of July?”

Even in 5th grade history, I felt the hypocrisy of the words between 1776, when the Declaration of Independence was signed, and 1865, when enslaved people were finally free. I was riled up at every ridiculous compromise over those nearly 90 years, every failure to assist people’s potential.

As StreetWise participant Cornelius Washington said, “It’s the same pattern today in a pretty package. Many conservatives don’t want to provide benefits that would elevate people’s status in life, like housing and health insurance.”

The word “slavery” was removed from the Declaration during its rewrite. Thomas Jefferson didn’t want to endanger the “fragile” coalition that was the new United States, according to the website for his house museum, Monticello. A slave owner himself, Jefferson believed the slave states of Georgia and South Carolina would not agree to break away from England if slavery were abolished.

The Henry Ford Foundation and the Constitutional Rights Foundation say that the Declaration authors in 1776 were just being expedient, because they thought slavery would disappear within a few years.

But as Vendor A. Allen and I have discussed, the invention of Eli Whitney’s cotton gin in 1794 did the opposite, because it took the work out of removing seeds from cotton. Cotton became more profitable; plantations grew larger and even more dependent on the labor of enslaved people.

Even at the very beginning, however, both North and South were tied to slavery by the “triangle trade.” Southern plantations used enslaved labor to produce tobacco, cotton and other cash crops for export back to Europe on ships owned by Northern merchants in exchange for sugar and rum traded for yet more slaves.

By the mid-19th century, according to the National Archives ( https://www.archives.gov/education/lessons/cotton-ginpatent), the South provided 60 percent of U.S. exports – most of it cotton. The U.S. supplied 75 percent of the world’s cotton, which was manufactured into cloth either in New England or in England.

Simultaneously, the cost of land and labor for cotton plantations meant there was no room for cities, so most immigrants went to the North. Just before the Civil War, the North had 71 percent of the railway mileage, 92 percent of the industrial workers, 86 percent of the manufacturing plants – and 71 percent of the population.

As a result, according to the National Park Service, Northern and Southern states were increasingly divided over three things that led to the Civil War: economic policies, cultural values, and the extent of the federal government. Underpinning it all was slavery.

One big compromise was in the Constitution, in May 1787.

Southern states wanted slaves to be counted among the general population, because it would give them greater numbers in the House of Representatives and the Electoral College.

But slave owners weren’t going to allow their Black people to vote. Northerners recognized the power play and demand-

ed a compromise, according to the Constitutional Rights Foundation. That’s why each slave counted for 3/5ths of a person. Even so, Southern slaveowners won 12 of the first 16 presidential elections.

Governing depended on keeping an equal number of slave and free states. There were 11 of each in 1819. Then Missouri wanted in. A territory that permitted slaves.

The Missouri Compromise of 1820 kept the balance by also admitting Maine as a free state. In addition, slavery was not permitted north of latitude 36/30, Missouri’s southern border.

The collision course toward war only grew during the 1850s:

• There were 15 slave states and 15 free when California applied for statehood in 1849. The Compromise of 1850 admitted California as a free state and allowed the territories of New Mexico and Utah to decide for themselves. Also included was the Fugitive Slave Act: people who did not return escaped slaves to their masters paid ruinous fines. Many Northerners thought it violated their own consciences.

• In 1851, Harriett Beecher Stowe published “Uncle Tom’s Cabin” in an abolitionist newspaper and then a book that sold 300,000 copies. Stowe imagined how an enslaved mother would feel about her baby being sold away, using published slave autobiographies and stories from fugitive Blacks. Northerners were shocked by the brutality; Southerners felt attacked.

• In 1854, the Kansas-Nebraska Act allowed new states to vote on slavery for themselves. Abolitionists were irate that it repealed the sacrosanct borders of the Missouri Compromise.

• In 1857, the Supreme Court said that Dred Scott, an enslaved person who had moved with his owner to free territory, was “property,” not a U.S. citizen, so he was unworthy of protection (both issues overturned with the 13th and 14th Amendments). The Court also said the federal government had no right to limit slavery in territories. There was no room for compromise anymore.

For me, the mid-1850s climate resembles the U.S. of the last several years. Then and now, people in the vanguard had been opposed to slavery. Just like the slow buildup of the 1850s, the general population has been moved from inertia by COVID-19, George Floyd’s death and the overturn of Roe v. Wade.

By the presidential election of 1860, the Republican party was known to be anti-slavery. Abraham Lincoln won with just 40 percent of the vote, thanks to a divided Democratic party and the South split between two candidates. The Civil War began in April 1861, when 11 Southern states left the U.S. to form a separate nation: the Confederacy. The war lasted four years, until the Appomattox surrender.

Vendor A. Allen and I have discussed the aftermath of the Civil War. Couldn’t more have been done for former enslaved people, to give them a hand up?

The Emancipation Proclamation and the Homestead Act went into effect on the same day: Jan. 1, 1863. The Proclamation refocused the Civil War on ending slavery, which gave the U.S. the moral high ground – and kept both France and England from aiding the Confederacy.

The Homestead Act granted 160 acres of land to anyone who had not taken arms against the U.S.: European immigrants, but formerly enslaved people too. They had to improve the land and remain there five years. (By the way, much of this land belonged to Native Americans.)

However, the challenges of farming on the dry prairie meant that many people never made it five years to ownership, according to the National Archives via history.com. Although 4 million claims were filed, only 1.6 million were processed. The

result was that 270 million acres – 10 percent of all U.S. lands – came into the hands of individuals.

Blacks accounted for 3,500 successful claimants, according to a new study funded by the National Park Service and conducted at the University of Nebraska. Their claims amounted to roughly 650,000 acres of prairie, with 15,000 inhabitants.

Like StreetWise participant Cornelius Washington, I relate to a speech Abraham Lincoln gave on the Fourth of July, 1861. He said the purpose of the U.S. government is “to elevate the condition of men, to lift artificial burdens from all shoulders and to give everyone an unfettered start and a fair chance in the race of life.”

Pulling yourself up by your bootstraps is one thing, but it is entirely different when you have no boots at all. Without equipment, livestock or cash, newly-freed slaves were in no position to uproot from southern plantations and strike out on their own. Sharecropping was their only option.

However, Union soldiers received credit for time served against the five-year requirement. One thing I can see that might have helped is if formerly enslaved people had been given land outright.

I told Chloe that it is sometimes disheartening to think that as a nation, we still are not on track to be true to our word. She said she knew what I meant.

But as President Biden said at the White House signing ceremony, “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.”

StreetWise Vendor Jacqueline Sanders on FREEDOM

People tell you what to do all the time. Freedom is getting up in the morning, doing things you like to do, like playing video games, watching television, or reading a book or going places without telling someone. It is having enough money for food. It’s a good and sustainable warm house to live in, a nice car to drive and other resources to pay your bills, to have anything your heart desires, anytime, anywhere, to come and go without worry. That is freedom to me.

StreetWise participant Cornelius Washington on FREEDOM

Freedom, to me, is maturity and the absolute truth about me and my life as a Black man in America.

With unlimited access to the doctrines of the American Declaration of Independence, which guarantees me the freedoms to make choices based on my decisions, however, freedom comes with a great responsibility. To me personally, my freedom is understood as having the ability to change and to act without constraint. I can possess the power (as we all have) to seek and potentially fulfill my purposes in life unhindered and to obtain unlimited access to personal freedom, with no parodies!

I have learned that many aspects of freedom do not necessarily mean the same as they do for me and others. Freedom for many is actually fleeting. For instance, many are physically free with freedoms, and many are mentally and psychologically locked up. Fortunately for many, including myself, today I love and respect the freedoms this (my) country allows me to possess. And, gratefully, to reflect and protect...

StreetWise Vendor A. Allen on FREEDOM

Being free and having freedom to be self-supporting are two different things. It reminds me of StreetWise. To be jobless and homeless is a tough situation. When you are unemployed, you are without a means of supporting yourself, so the only means of being self-supporting is to steal, rob, or beg for money.

This could be a tough situation, because the choices could be devastating and costly to an individual’s freedom and self-esteem. It’s costly to one’s freedom, because stealing and robbing could very easily cause you to become incarcerated. And begging, while it seems harmless, in the long run does have a cost. It is extremely damaging to a person’s self-esteem. When you are asking for money, you have to humble yourself. And to do that lowers one’s dignity, affects one’s way of looking at one’s own importance or estimation.

But with a resource such as a magazine, you can stand on your own as a man, and seek to be self-employed through entrepreneurship.

It’s the same as when the enslaved people were freed. It was only an illusion, a mirage. As defined by Merriam Webster, freedom is the quality or state of being free from coercion or restraint in choice or action. To be truly liberated from the slave owner, these people needed some type of support to get started with their new lives in freedom. This was not provided. “Forty acres and a mule” was initially suggested, but it was never given. That’s the reason the slaves sold themselves back into another form of slavery called “share cropping.”

Back to how this relates to StreetWise. StreetWise is a hand up, not a handout, which means StreetWise provides an opportunity for someone to become self-supporting through their own efforts and perspiration. The same could have been applied back then: giving resources to the formerly enslaved people so they could become selfsupporting on their own.

If you know of anyone who desires the same type of self-supporting lifestyle, I welcome them to become vendors and to sell StreetWise magazine. I host orientation every Thursday at noon, at the StreetWise offices at 2009 S. State St.

A Union soldier stands with African Americans in 1862 on the plantation of Thomas F. Drayton on Hilton Head Island

Henry P. Moore

President Biden signs the Juneteenth National Independence Day Act in the East Room of the White House

Evan Vucci