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

Forum Index » Metropolitan DC Local Politics

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

Subject:

Emoticons





More smilies

Text Color: Font: Close Marks

[quote=Anonymous][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].
Just say June 19th was the day that all the slaves were finally free.[/quote]

Except it wasn't. The Emancipation Proclamation (1863) only applied to slaves in Confederate states, and slaves were only freed in practical effect when Union forces liberated an area. Maryland, Delaware, Kentucky, and Missouri remained in the Union and remained slave states (and West Virginia was admitted to the Union in 1863 as a slave state as well). West Virginia, Maryland, and Missouri abolished slavery in the latter years of the war (1864 and early 1865), but Kentucky and Delaware both rejected the attempts to end slavery, and thus the slaves in those states were not freed until the passage of the 13th Amendment in December 1865. That's 40-50,000 slaves alone, as well as a handful of slaves in New Jersey, which took a gradual approach to emancipation but still had some who had been grandfathered in.

Juneteenth = Great holiday. Nothing against it. But June 19, 1865 was not the date when the last slaves were freed. [/quote]

Oops![/quote]

Options

	Disable HTML in this message
	Disable BB Code in this message
	Disable smilies in this message

Review message

Search Recent Topics Hottest Topics