On December 31, 1862, Black Americans both enslaved and free stayed up until midnight, counting down the minutes until the Emancipation Proclamation took effect. This was known as “Freedom’s Eve,” and first Watch Night services took place in churches and homes across the nation. The enslaved people in Confederate states were declared legally free (more or less) on January 1, 1863 when the US government denied racist traitors their human property.
Union soldiers reportedly marched onto plantations and across cities in the South reading the world-shaking words from Lincoln’s Emancipation Proclamation. Many of those soldiers were Black and we can only imagine their delight.
But we point out that enslaved people were “more or less” emancipated on January 1, 1863. Wherever the evil Confederacy still maintained control, Black people could never be free. This remains true today.
Freedom would not come to Texas until June 19, 1865 when 2,000 Union troops arrived in Galveston Bay and announced that slavery had ended for more than 250,000 Black people in the state. Texas’s population was just more than 600,000 people total at the time, so almost half were enslaved Black people. This is why so many former Confederate states would rush to jump Jim Crow.
However, that’s a history lesson banned in Florida for another day. Today, we celebrate Juneteenth, when slavery in America ended two years and more than two centuries late.
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Black people have celebrated Juneteenth for generations, but it finally became a federal holiday in 2021. We owe this long overdue national recognition to 96-year-old activist Opal Lee, who is known as the grandmother of Juneteenth.
Lee grew up in Texas, where she remembers childhood Juneteenth celebrations. Unfortunately, on June 19, 1939, when she was 13, 500 white rioters set fire to her family’s home in a predominantly white Fort Worth neighborhood.
“The people didn’t want us,” she said, referring to the white population. “They started gathering. The paper said the police couldn’t control the mob. My father came with a gun and police told them if he busted a cap they’d let the mob have us. They started throwing things at the house and when they left, they took out the furniture and burned it and burned the house.”
White people invaded and plundered her home before destroying what little remained. This was their own ironic commemoration of Juneteenth.
In 2016, when Lee was almost 90, she walked from Fort Worth to Washington DC to advocate for a national Juneteenth holiday. Even after Sen. Ron Johnson blocked the holiday in 2020, Lee was convinced it would happen eventually.
“My point is let’s make it a holiday in my lifetime,” Lee said defiantly, fully aware of her own mortality. Fortunately, Lee outlived Johnson’s ignorance — well, on this specific issue — and not only did she see Juneteenth become a federal holiday in 2021, she’s still here to appreciate it.
She’s also not ready to live this earthly battlefield, either. “I’m not going to sit in a rocker and wait for the Lord to call me,” Lee said in an interview Friday. “He’s going to have to catch me.”
That’s the spirit of the revolution.
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