Juneteenth
It took 30 months for the words of the Emancipation Proclamation to reach slaves in Galveston, Texas, telling them that they were indeed free.
It has taken a lifetime for me to understand the significance of “Juneteenth”.
Juneteenth is the celebration of a day in June of 1865 when a tiny segment of our population was finally informed that of their freedom. Per Wikipedia:
“Despite the surrender of Confederate General-in-Chief Robert E. Lee at Appomattox Court House on April 9, 1865, the western Confederate Army of the Trans-Mississippi did not surrender until June 2. On the morning of June 19, 1865, Union Major General Gordon Granger arrived on the island of Galveston to take command of the more than 2,000 federal troops recently landed in the department of Texas to enforce the emancipation of its slaves and oversee Reconstruction, nullifying all laws passed within Texas during the war by Confederate lawmakers. The order informed all Texans that, in accordance with a Proclamation from the Executive of the United States, all slaves were free:
"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."
It is interesting to note is that slavery was not officially ended in the states of Kentucky and Delaware until the ratification of the Thirteenth Amendment in December of 1865 – nearly three years after the enactment of the Emancipation Proclamation, and six months after Juneteenth.
Juneteenth raises a question in my mind – what does it mean for me, as a citizen of the United States, to be “free”?
In seeking an answer to that question, I was led to Franklin Roosevelt’s “Four Freedoms Speech”.
Written in reaction to the isolationism that had defined U.S. foreign policy after World War One, Roosevelt was seeking to provide justification for U.S. support of allies such as Great Britain and China, who were already fighting for their very existence against the Axis powers. In his State of the Union address on January 6th, 1941, Roosevelt described an aspirational agenda for America:
“In the future days, which we seek to make secure, we look forward to a world founded upon four essential human freedoms.
The first is freedom of speech, and expression—everywhere in the world.
The second is freedom of every person to worship God in his own way—everywhere in the world.
The third is freedom from want—which, translated into world terms, means economic understandings which will secure to every nation a healthy peacetime life for its inhabitants—everywhere in the world.
The fourth is freedom from fear—which, translated into world terms, means a world-wide reduction of armaments to such a point and in such a thorough fashion that no nation will be in a position to commit an act of physical aggression against any neighbor—anywhere in the world.
That is no vision of a distant millennium.
It is a definite basis for a kind of world attainable in our own time and generation.
That kind of world is the very antithesis of the so-called new order of tyranny which the dictators seek to create with the crash of a bomb.”
— Franklin D. Roosevelt, excerpted from the State of the Union Address to the Congress, January 6, 1941
It is interesting to note while the first two of Roosevelt’s Four Freedoms – speech and worship - are protected by the First Amendment in the United States Constitution, no where in our Constitution or Bill of Rights are the latter two Freedoms – from “want” and “fear” – imbedded in law.
Later in the same speech Roosevelt went on to specify six basic goals:
Equality of opportunity for youth and for others.
Jobs for those who can work.
Security for those who need it.
The ending of special privilege for the few.
The preservation of civil liberties for all.
The enjoyment of the fruits of scientific progress in a wider and constantly rising standard of living.
From its beginnings in July of 2021, I sought to keep “Thoughts for the Week” away from the realm of politics, but I have said that this epistle will touch on the topics of “leadership” and “life”.
So let me ask a question…
If a portion of a nation’s citizens are not free, can it be said that none of that nation’s citizens are free?
After all, if we are one citizenry, one people, one country, of all races, of all creeds, all created equal…
Are we all free?
On Juneteenth, let us all be informed that we are free.
On Juneteenth, let us be reminded that the fruit of the freedoms of speech, of worship, from want, from fear, are distributed unequally among us.
On Juneteenth, let us renew the necessary work to be done so that our entire body of people are free.
Because as one nation, under God, indivisible….if one of us is not free, none of us are truly free.
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