Reply to Juneteenth a Federal holiday? What do you think?

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]I would prefer Emancipation Day as the holiday. Juneteenth is just a sad reminder that the racism marched on and should be celebrated in Texas.[/quote]

At first I thought that Emancipation Day ought to be the day to commemorate, but the Emancipation Proclamation took effect January 1, and the 13th amendment took effect December 6 (or December 18 depending, since that's how long it took for the federal government to receive notice from the state legislatures). Neither are good dates for a holiday at this point.

And yeah, Juneteenth was primarily an east Texas tradition that spread over time to other areas of the South, and some northern cities due to the Great Migration. But Juneteenth has the advantage of having developed organically, and that's better for a holiday's broad acceptance than simply declaring a date to be when something gets celebrated simply because it's more accurate.

It'll be annoying when your kid asks if June 19th was the day that the slaves were freed, and you'll have to say, "well, no, it was the date some slaves in Texas were freed, because blah blah Emancipation Proclamation, blah blah one last cotton crop, blah blah 13th amendment..." But at this point we're used to having the "Columbus didn't [i]actually[/i] discover America" and the "Jesus wasn't [i]actually[/i] born in December" conversations (or for a deep cut the "Labor Day isn't May 1 because Grover Cleveland blah blah national guard blah blah" convo). [/quote]

You know enslaved people weren’t actually freed by the Emancipation Proclamation, right?  We had to actually win the war and/or take control of territory during the war for that to make any difference.  And it didn’t free any enslaved people in the slave states that didn’t secede.[/quote]

DP: it seems pretty clear that the PP does know that.

Anyway +1 on the PP's reasoning.  The two plus year delay on even hearing about the EP and the way the celebration spread from Texas are also great teaching elements of the story as well.  Also, it's a cool portmanteau.[/quote]

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