When I was in elementary school, some three score years ago, a teacher would talk about slavery and the Emancipation Proclamation every year and the teachings would continue through senior high school.
As a young person, I tried to wrap my head around what slavery actually was. How could you not have any freedoms? We saw horrible pictures and read bad stories. Who could be that cruel to other human beings? The thought scorched my heart and soul.
Through the route from elementary to high school, as we got older and our understanding grew, the anger and sadness mounted. Some in my generation got clearer stories from their great-grandparents.
Now on Monday (Louisiana officially marked Juneteenth this past Friday), the nation will mark Juneteenth — Freedom Day, a holiday marking the last group of slaves in Texas to get the word, albeit late, that slavery had ended and they were free.
In this climate of hate and divisiveness, this is not a holiday that is being widely accepted in some communities.
Some might find it’s not a tale their children should know about because it mentions some horrible things about the country leading up to Juneteenth. That kind of closed thinking has infected the good sense of this country. I doubt many children even know the relevance of the day and their parents and others are good with that.
This day ought to be big, really big. Think about how we arrived at Juneteenth. To do that you have to think back, way back, to 1619 when it is said the first Black slaves set foot in what would become the United States. African people were brought to this country on boats, many of them destined to lives similar to animals.
Many worked under conditions that few people now could survive. Over the years, thousands were bred like horses to produce physically strong slaves. Some were raped. Many were beaten with whips. Some lost appendages when they were caught running away.
Children were sold from their parents and vice versa. Imagine the emotional devastation. Lynching, too, you know how that went.
I wonder if this part of America’s history is not taught, or glossed over, in many schools today.
But think of this.
Hundreds of thousands of these people had become the backbone of the South’s economy, working on large plantations picking cotton. But they also worked with tobacco, corn and livestock. Without slaves, virtually free labor, who knows how the South’s economy would have survived.
As Black Baptist church members would say, “Tell it.”
How remarkable is it, that a few generations later, their lineage would become landowners, business people, politicians, doctors, lawyers, engineers, etc. What a story to tell. And Juneteenth is a great day to do it.
Now, back to Juneteenth or Freedom Day. The Emancipation Proclamation was issued by President Abraham Lincoln on Jan. 1, 1863, announcing “that all persons held as slaves” within the rebellious areas "are, and henceforward shall be free.” So we should have had the celebration in January, right?
You have to fast forward to June 19, 1865, the day when Maj. Gen. Gordon Granger led Union soldiers to Galveston, Texas, to deliver the message that the Union had won the Civil War and that the ending of slavery would be enforced.
The full story, though, is that some enslavers in Texas didn’t tell their slaves they were free and had them continue working.
Juneteenth should be a day that the country marks the freedom of a people who never asked to come here, but through pure hell and the resource of their will, assimilated and wove themselves in the fabric of this country.
Email Edward Pratt, a former newspaperman, at epratt1972@yahoo.com.