We need to acknowledge the worst of our past to shape a better future
On Monday, we will celebrate Juneteenth, a day that commemorates the issuing of General Order No. 3, which freed enslaved persons in Texas, the last place in the US where slavery still continued in the final days of the American Civil War. Union General Gordon Granger issued the order on June 19, 1865, two months after Robert E. Lee surrendered his forces at Appomattox Court House, and over two years after President Abraham Lincoln gave his signature to the Emancipation Proclamation.
Despite its significance, Juneteenth was only recognized as a federal holiday in 2021. This is typical of the delay which too often accompanies the work of addressing the realities of racism in the US. Slavery existed for centuries before it was abolished, the Emancipation Proclamation was signed years before its effects were fully felt in the South, and the Civil War had been over for two months before enslaved persons in Texas gained their freedom. Delay, deferral, the “bad check” Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. spoke of America giving its Black population—these have been defining characteristics of America’s engagement with its history of racism and the effects of this history in the present. This has kept the legacy of slavery and racism part of the American landscape long after General Granger issued his order, an influence which pervades much in the current moment. Part of the conversation about race that has emerged over the last few years has been about how it has been possible to overlook this, to fail to notice the many ways the effects of an unjust racial status quo still permeate American life. If we are willing to look closer at what we have called progress, we can see the many ways it is incomplete, reflecting the unfinished work that is America itself.
Read more here.