E
verybody loves a great story and Juneteenth is a great story.
It’s the stuff of movies, the dashing colonel riding into Texas on a white horse reading the proclamation setting all the slaves free!
You can almost hear the cheers!
It might not have happened that way but on June 19, 1865 the last of the slaves were freed. It ended a dark era in our country.
But the real road to freedom began 2½ years earlier with the Emancipation Proclamation. On January 1, 1863 President Lincoln freed all the slaves in the Confederate States, only in the states at war with the North.
This was a great thing but it was also ironic and hypocritical.
At the time, there were 4 million slaves in America mostly in the south, but more than half a million were in the north.
It was a different world back then, all walks of life owned slaves, U.S. Presidents, men, women, even young people owned them. Thank God times change.
President Lincoln and many others didn’t think it was normal, so he set them free.
Lincoln freed the slaves for 3 reasons, first, it is a horrible practice. Next, in the middle of the Civil War it weakened the south. The next reason saved the union.
England and France were ready to join the south in the Civil War which probably would have tipped the war against the north. Both countries were against slavery but needed cotton from the south, so they turned a blind eye to slavery.
The Emancipation Proclamation made it front and center so they couldn’t ignore it anymore. England and France withdrew their support. If they had helped the south there would be no United States of America.
Abraham Lincoln kept us together and saved our country.
More than 2 years went by before the whole country got the message to free the slaves. In June of 1865, Juneteenth happened.
The last act of President Lincoln before he was assassinated was to get freedom to be constitutional law. We lost Lincoln in April 1865. In December of that year they passed the 13th Amendment, officially abolishing slavery.
Another irony pops us here. Five years later In 1870 the 15th Amendment passed giving former male slaves the right to vote.
Black men who had been slaves were allowed to vote, but women weren’t. Women had to wait 50 years until 1920 to be able to vote. They thought more of former slaves than of women.
It’s been a bumpy road for African Americans, but we have a long way to go to get over our ignorant prejudice.
Juneteenth was the greatest day of all. It was a bright, shining moment of exciting action cheered in the streets.
And we’re still cheering today!
Dennis Gregory writes a bi-monthly column for West Hawaii Today and welcomes your comments at makewavess@yahoo.com