Opinion/Stead: Juneteenth is a holiday for all of us
The newer federal holiday of Juneteenth will have its official observance tomorrow. Just like any other holiday, some offices and businesses will be closed and some services will be unavailable just like for any real holiday. So let’s deal with likely grumpy objections.
Why a new holiday? Don’t "they" already have a national holiday with Martin Luther King Day?
Really, no.
This is not like Italians have Columbus Day, to celebrate the Atlantic crossing of an explorer who never actually set foot on the North American Continent; as we all know, Leif landed first. This is not like St. Patrick’s Day, which the Irish extend to all by claiming that everybody is Irish on the saint’s day of green beer.
Martin Luther King Day is not a racial or ethnic holiday at its core. Dr. King did not only belong to Black people. He is instead an icon of all humanity. His was a passionate and deliberate plea for the recognition of the commonality of all humans, regardless of race or gender or religion. His was a plea for true equality under the law. While it may never happen, it is a condition to aspire to for all humans.
Juneteenth is a very specific celebration, just as slavery in America was very specific. The Black community has celebrated it for well over a century as the day that the word of the Emancipation Proclamation finally reached the westernmost territory. June 19 marks the day when federal troops arrived in Galveston, Texas, in 1865 to take control of the state and ensure that all enslaved people be freed.
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I have written before about why slavery here was different than the slave-owning system in the Bible or in Roman times, which was often cited as a precedent for slavery as a morally neutral institution. Those were economic slaves, perhaps losers in a war or the children of slaves, or a child that was sold to feed the other children. But they could be manumitted, or purchase themselves back from the institution.
Our slavery was different. Our use of the One Drop Rule, in which anyone with a Black ancestor was intrinsically a slave, was the American model. The categorization of mixed-race slaves, from mulatto to octoroon, with each step further away from Black indicating a greater economic worth, was a graphic demonstration of how the One Drop Rule worked.
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It took a little over two years for the news of emancipation to reach those who were freed. The holiday used to be noted as Emancipation Day, and teachers used to speak about it in school to introduce children to the concept of slavery and how great and good President Lincoln had freed the slaves.
Emancipation was a legal term describing the termination of a condition that was by its very nature inhuman. It was a white person’s way to describe the end of Black slavery, by concentrating on the technical release without addressing the intrinsic evil of race-based slavery. But Juneteenth was the description of the events from those who had their intrinsic liberty as human beings finally recognized. They were not freed; they had always been free. Juneteenth was the legal affirmation that they had been wrongfully used, as were their ancestors in the Americas.
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Juneteenth is a holiday to consider the paradoxes of the United States. Our republic, one of the longest-lasting in human history, was partially created by men who were slave owners themselves and saw no irony in that. When the 15th Amendment to the Constitution was ratified in 1870, it affirmed that the right to vote could not be “denied or abridged by the United States or by any state on account of race, color, or previous condition of servitude”, which meant that while Black men could vote, Black women — and white women, too — could not vote for another 50 years.
Juneteenth is not about the intrinsic right. It is about the recognition and acceptance of that right. By guaranteeing legal freedom to slaves, the stage was set for all to enjoy the freedoms that being a citizen of the United States established. Juneteenth is, in fact, a holiday for all of us.
Cynthia Stead is a columnist for the Cape Cod Times and can be contacted at cestead@gmail.com.
This article originally appeared on Cape Cod Times: Juneteenth is a holiday for all of us to celebrate
