On Juneteenth

Annette Gordon-Reed ON JUNETEENTH ON JUNETEENTH

PULITZER PRIZE-WINNING

historian and Texas native Annette Gordon-Reed chronicles the country’s long road to Juneteenth, recounting its origins in Texas and the enormous hardships that African Americans have endured from Reconstruction through Jim Crow and beyond. From the June 9, 2021, online program “Annette Gordon-Reed: On Juneteenth.” Part of our Good Lit series, underwritten by the Bernard Osher Foundation. ANNETTE GORDON-REED, Carl M. Loeb University Professor, Harvard University; Author, On Juneteenth In conversation with Judge LADORIS CORDELL, (Ret).

LADORIS CORDELL: It is my pleasure to welcome Annette Gordon-Reed, author of On Juneteenth. Annette is a Pulitzer Prize-winning historian and Carl M. Loeb Professor at Harvard University. As a Texas native and descendant of enslaved people brought to Texas as early as the 1820s, Annette chronicles our country’s long and ongoing journey to ensure freedom and equality for all. Welcome. ANNETTE GORDON-REED: Glad to be here. Thank you for inviting me. CORDELL: In your book you write, “Texas, more than any state in the Union, has always embodied nearly every major aspect of the story of the United States. It is the American story told from this most American place.” What exactly do you mean by that? GORDON-REED: I mean Texas has all of the kinds of things that America has struggled with, within the confines of the state. There’s westward expansion, conflict between Native peoples and Europeans, plantation slavery, Jim Crow after the end of plantation slavery. It borders another country, so immigration is an issue. It was a republic. It’s all there, and it makes it a very, very volatile place. Even though it seems to be exotic and very different from the rest of America, it has all of these components of America right there. CORDELL: I loved, in the book, the way that you intertwined your own story with the story that builds up toward Juneteenth, so let’s talk a little bit about your upbringing in the town of Conroe, Texas. If you could tell us about your parents and how their views impacted your public school education that resulted in you integrating your town’s schools. And really, what kind of parents would have you do that? What was their thinking? And what was the experience like for you? GORDON-REED: Okay. I was born in Livingston, Texas, about 50 miles northeast of Conroe. My parents moved to Conroe when I was about six months old. My mother got a job teaching at Booker T. Washington, the Black school in the community, K-12. My father had a store, and he did a number of things trying to be an entrepreneur at the time.

They moved to Conroe, and with my two older brothers I went to the Black school, we should call it, when I was in kindergarten. By the time I was going to the first grade, Texas had come up with something called the Freedom of Choice Plan. And it wasn’t just Texas; other jurisdictions in the South had this too.

It was a way of trying to get around the decision in Brown v. Board of Education. This is like 10 years after that. Under the Freedom of Choice Plan, white parents would choose white schools and Black parents would choose Black schools, so that everybody was

going to live according to those traditions.

My parents decided that they were not going to choose the Black school, that they would send me to a white school, Anderson Elementary School. They made this decision . . . well, and I’ve said that their rationale for doing that kind of changed over time as they became disillusioned with the effects of integration, disappointed when whatever transformation they thought was going to happen didn’t come to fruition.

Their reasons became more pragmatic. They’d say, “Well, we sent you to this school because we knew that the court would eventually strike down Freedom of Choice Plans, that it would be unconstitutional and everybody would have to change schools.” This is what they said later on.

But thinking back to that time period and remembering how they talked about this, remembering how other people responded to this, it’s almost as if, in their disappointment, they did not want to admit that they had been idealistic, so it became a pragmatic decision.

This is great for a historian, thinking about the past and how people’s understandings about things sometimes legitimately change over time, or they alter them. It becomes a different rationale in their mind, and then they think they had it all along.

It all worked for me because I loved school. I loved reading, and I loved to learn. So the actual work that we were doing was pleasant to me. It was something that I liked. But there was this social overlay about integration that was always there, that I was always aware of it.

It’s not a national story, but some of it, it’s a big deal in that area to have done that. It was certainly a big deal for me and probably shaped me in ways that I’ve had to think about. Again, back to this question: After I had my kids, would I do that, and I’m not sure. CORDELL: What makes your storytelling so rich is the fact that you’re not only a historian, but you’re also a lawyer. Why did you go to law school? GORDON-REED: It was partly to please my father. It was partly because I knew that lawyers could make a difference in the world. And, again, this too; my history is tied up in law. I thought that this was a way to make a living while I took the opportunity to try to make things better for people. So that’s why I went to law school. CORDELL: As a result, your descriptions of court cases that impacted the lives of Black people in Texas, they’re really riveting. One example is your telling of the 1940 case of Texas v. White that went all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court.

So Bob White, a Black man, had been accused of raping a white woman in Livingston, Texas. That’s where you were born. The woman was unable to identify him as the rapist, after viewing 15 Black men rounded up by law enforcement, but [she] did I.D. Mr. White after the cops told him to say the words that the woman attributed to her assailant.

He was arrested. He was jailed, and he was taken by the Texas Rangers every night for a week, chained to a tree and beaten until he signed a confession, even though he couldn’t read or write and he had no lawyer. A jury convicted him and imposed the death sentence.

He appealed, and was granted a new trial that was moved to Conroe, where you were subsequently raised. He was again convicted, and this time the appeal goes to the U.S. Supreme Court. So could you take it from there? GORDON-REED: The Court rules that taking somebody outside, tying them to the tree and whipping them until they confess was a violation of the due process clause, and they send the case back down.

I did not know that this case had gone to the Supreme Court. My grandfather used to talk about Bob White when I was a little girl, and so I knew about Bob White. He knew Bob White. He knew the Cochrans, the woman that Bob White allegedly raped, and the husband of the woman, called Dude Cochran.

So the case goes back down for trial. While it’s going on, Dude Cochran comes into the courthouse and shoots Bob White in the back of the head, killing him instantly. [Cochran] hands the gun to some official. He’s later tried for this and acquitted in just a few minutes, and the courtroom erupts in

Historian Annette Gordon-Reed.

“It’s almost as if, in their disappointment, they didn’t want to admit that they had been idealistic, so it became a pragmatic decision.”

applause.

So here is the situation where the person [committed] premeditated murder, shot someone in front of [a] packed courthouse, and he gets off. This really breaks the spirit of people, because procedurally there were people who were protesting this. It got to the Supreme Court, and the Court said, “You can’t do this,” and sent it back down, so people may have thought that the system of justice might actually work.

But then to have him killed in this way and have nothing happen to his assailant was just really, really rough for people. There are people in my family who refused to spend the night in Conroe. They would come to visit but then they would go.

I think it was almost like a protest, that they didn’t want to spend the night in a place where something like that could happen.

The purpose of the chapter, the things that I’m talking about, is that these kinds of things seep into the culture, a cultural memory to the way people do things in a society, and you can’t just erase that. I mean, law can be changed. But on the ground, the culture and traditions and attitudes can persist.

In a town with a culturally embedded memory about violence and the possibility of violence that will not be punished, I think it affected everybody. Even if things were against the law, traditions and cultural memories and understandings die hard.

Having said that, I had a good time growing up. We rode bikes when the summer came, when school was out. Take your shoes off. That’s it until you go to church or go into town or something like that. I had a good childhood, because my parents cared about me, and I had my brothers, and I took piano lessons. I did all the kinds of things that kids do, but there was this tension because of the racial situation; you knew that at any moment if you got too far out of line or anybody else got too far out of line, then it could be a real problem there. You can have happiness and a sense of peace, but at the same time at the back of your mind, you can understand that this can all go awry with a spark. CORDELL: As we move toward Juneteenth discussion, I want to talk about documents. The first one I want to ask you to talk about is the Texas Declaration of Independence.

You write in your book, “I often encounter great hesitancy about and impatience with discussing race when talking about American past. The obvious difficulty with those kinds of complaints is that people in the past, in the overall American context and the specific context of Texas, talked a lot about and did a lot about race. It isn’t some newly discovered fad topic. Race is right there in the documents, official and personal.” And you conclude: “It would take a concerted effort not to consider and analyze the subject.”

So the Texas Declaration of Independence, talk to us about that and why that is significant. GORDON-REED: Well, they wanted to imitate what had happened in the United States and wanted to have a statement as to why they wanted to break away from Mexico, so it follows the form that Jefferson chose for the American Declaration.

It starts off talking about the difficulty that they had with the Mexican government and then lists grievances just like the American Declaration, but it curiously leaves out, “We hold these truths to be self-evident that all men are created equal.”

They don’t include it because they repudiate that idea, that all men are created equal, and didn’t want a part of it because they understood that it gave people ideas. African American people believed that they were equal human beings before Jefferson put those words in the Declaration, but those words had influenced people and even further, might influence them to action. So they don’t put that in there. Their constitution talks specifically about slavery and it talks about race. So it’s just a little bit hard for me to understand how you’re going to talk about the Texas republic without talking about its constitution.

Once we note the absence in the Texas Declaration about equality and you look at the constitution, you have to talk about race. It invites discussions about race. So I’m interested to see what people are going to do with this, with the 1836 Project [a legislative initiative to teach Texas history], and in the future.

I don’t want to single Texas out only, but it’s a big state and people pay attention to it. In other states as well, there is a reaction to a more inclusive, and they would say critical, history in different places. This notion of patriotic education, which people define or

President joe Biden signs a bill making Juneteenth a federal holiday. (White House photo.)

“Even if things were against the law, traditions and cultural memories and understandings die hard.”

seem to be defining, is only talking about things that make us happy or make us proud.

It’s something that I think we have to push back against, because there’s no benefit in hiding things from people. The things that I’m talking about are not hidden. It’s not a matter of interpretation. They’re right there in the documents, and it would be doing a disservice to students if you did not acknowledge that. CORDELL: Let’s get to June 19, 1865.

Gordon Granger, a general in the U.S. Army, arrives in Galveston, Texas, and he’s carrying with him General Order No. 3. Because of your book, this was the first time I’d read General Order No. 3, which is just four sentences.

So I’d like you to talk to us about the immediate and long-term impact on Texans of all hues about this order, and I’m just going to read the four sentences. “General Order No. 3. The people of Texas are informed that in accordance with the Proclamation from the Executive of the United States,” meaning the president, “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 at their present homes and work for wages. They are informed that they will be allowed to collect at military posts and they will not be supported in idleness, either there or elsewhere.”

So talk to us about this order. GORDON-REED: The traditional story is that he read those words from the balcony of the villa where he was staying. Some people say that his soldiers went around Galveston, which was the major city in Texas at the time. He probably did both. He could’ve done both.

But the truth is some people knew before he got there what he was intending to say, what was going to happen. Enslaved people are jubilant, very happy about this, and the whites are not so happy about it. There are stories about people who were whipped when they celebrated the news of emancipation, but they kept doing it anyway.

Over the years, there were celebrations at people’s homes, at churches and so forth. The Freedmen’s Bureau sponsored some Juneteenth celebrations as well. In 1876, some Black men in Houston pooled their resources and bought land for the specific purposes of hosting Juneteenth celebrations.

People would come and give speeches, sing songs, make food and talk about what had happened, remember what had happened. That eventually became Emancipation Park, which is still in Houston today, where I have been to Juneteenth celebrations as a kid when we weren’t celebrating at home or at my grandmother’s house. CORDELL: So there is, as you noted, a move afoot in Texas to ban or limit the role of slavery and the impact of racism that can be taught in the schools. A law has already passed the [state] House that would limit teacher-led discussions of current events, prohibit course credit for “political activism or lobbying, including volunteering for civil rights groups, and ban teaching of the 1619 Project.”

Another proposed law would create a committee to promote patriotic education about the state’s secession from Mexico in 1836 and limit how teachers can discuss the ways racism influences the legal system in Texas. Another would block exhibits at the Alamo from explaining the major figures in the Texas revolution were slave owners. What is this and what is to be done? GORDON-REED: People don’t want to be made to feel bad about things that people whom they consider to be their ancestors did, but they did these things. These things happened. Nobody’s pretending that there was slavery in Texas when there wasn’t. Nobody’s pretending that there was not a conflict with Mexico over the issue of slavery. There were other reasons why they separated, but that was one of them. That was clearly one of the things that was galvanizing them.

So it’s misplaced guilt.

You could easily say, “Yes, they made mistakes. They had some good things that they did, but they made mistakes, and we’re going to go forward from that.”

But this is an effort to say, “No. No mistakes were made. There were no problems.” And you can’t do that without denying the history and the heritage of, say, my family. Am I supposed to pretend that my great-greatgreat-grandparents were not enslaved? Am I supposed to say that that was an okay thing?

It’s unrealistic and I think it’s a reaction. It’s out of fear. CORDELL: How do you observe Juneteenth today? GORDON-REED: Well, I live in an apartment, so I can’t barbecue. I try to drink red soda water. We usually purchase barbecued brisket. I look at pictures, remembering. I know I’m going to be talking to people all day pretty much, but it’s more food related. It’s the soul food and the red soda water and thinking about my family. CORDELL: Another way to spend Juneteenth, obviously, is reading your book, because it’s just a wonderful context in which to place all of this. How do you feel about it possibly becoming a national holiday? I mean, it’s something that happened in Texas. GORDON-REED: Well, I think it’s a good idea. I think there should be a day to commemorate Emancipation, which was not just an event in Black people’s lives. It was an event in the lives of the country, an event in the lives of the world.

I would hope that the day would bring an impetus for education and it wouldn’t just be a day of red soda water and barbecue, but a time when people were taught about Emancipation and the struggle that came afterward. I think it’s backward-looking in some ways. As commemoration, we’re looking to the past, but I think the people who actually were in that time were thinking about the future, what they had to do next. And that’s a meaningful message, I think, for us as well, not just about the past but what we have to do next.