So How Did You Celebrate Juneteenth?

By the time someone I follow on Twitter mentioned Juneteenth fourteen hours ago, it was already June 20th here in Japan. 

I hadn't gotten the news about the day becoming an official national holiday by act of Congress and signature of President Joe Biden, so, if I had remembered it, I would still be operating under the impression that it was an unofficial holiday.

Oh, well. 

The purpose of celebrating a holiday is not something sacred about the exact date, it's to help us recall the ideas, events, concept, goals, etc., that the holiday memorializes -- that the holiday is intended to bring out attention back to. So, the holiday has served its purpose for me this year, even if belatedly.

Here is the document memorialized:

 

Juneteenth --
Jubilee Day
Emancipation Day

 

Head Quarters District of Texas   
Galveston Texas June 19th 1865.

General Orders
   No. 3.

              The people of Texas are informed that, in accordance with a proclamation from the Executive of the United States, 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 quietly at their present homes and work for wages. They are informed that they will not be allowed to collect at military posts and that they will not be supported in idleness either there or elsewhere.

              By order of Major General Granger

                        F.W. Emery

                        Major A.A. Genl.

 

This is a memorial of the day that emancipation was officially announced in Texas.

A war had been fought. Texas had joined on the side of states retaining the right to choose for themselves about the form of indentured servitude known as chattel slavery. Slave owners who didn't understand how to transition to a new world where indentured servitude would be by terminable contract moved to Texas in large numbers, looking for refuge from the new world order.

This order should have eliminated slavery, and it gave hope to a lot of former slaves. It is that hope which is celebrated and remembered. 

And it's a hope we still all need, since indentured servitude by unconscionable contract is still with us.

If we want to break down the walls between the classes, and those in every class, including the so-called upper classes of so-called privilege that is mostly illusion, we should all want the walls broken down. If we want those walls broken down, we should all celebrate Juneteenth, to the extent that those whose natural right it is to celebrate it will allow us.