Daily Verse | Psalm 53:1
The fool says in his heart, “There is no God.”

Monday’s Reading: Psalms 55-59

Happy Monday. Apologies for the absence over the last few days — a collision of priorities meant I had to demote my blogging to concentrate on other matters.

If you are a dad, Happy (belated) Father’s Day. I enjoyed the day with all of my family — minus one who lives half a continent away. It’s nice to be formally appreciated once a year, and I’m grateful that it comes within the context of strong family relationships so that it’s not something done out of obligation but our of genuine love and respect.

We had an awesome pizza dinner and watched Dinesh D’Souza’s “2000 Mules.” If you haven’t seen it, I strongly encourage you to spend the $20. After watching it, you can’t say that the 2020 election wasn’t completely corrupted, if not outright stolen.

Yesterday was also the second annual recognition of Juneteenth as a federal holiday. Uncle Joe signed the Juneteenth National Independence Day Act into law on June 17, 2021, and I have the day off today in honor of the holiday.

I didn’t understand until recently that Juneteenth is about commemorating the emancipation of enslaved African-Americans in the United States.

Juneteenth has been celebrated for more than 156 years, though its history is possibly lesser known than other American observances. Although the Emancipation Proclamation, which freed enslaved African Americans in Confederate states, went into effect in 1863, this document did not immediately end slavery. In fact, it took until June 19, 1865—more than two years later—to end the horrors of slavery in Texas. And slavery continued in pockets of some Union states until December 6, 1865, when the 13th Amendment was ratified and slavery was formally ended in America.

Part of the reason it took that long to reach Texas was that the Civil War was still being fought, yet the state experienced no large-scale fighting or significant presence of Union troops. Because of that, many southerners took their slaves and moved to Texas to keep them out of the war’s reach.

It took 2,000 federal troops two and a half years to arrive in Texas to take control of the state and to enforce emancipation. The man who led the troops and announced that 250,000 slaves in Texas were free was U.S. General Gordon Granger, who stood on the soil of Galveston Bay, Texas, on June 19, 1865, and read General Orders No. 3 (pictured above):

The people of Texas are informed that, in accordance with a proclamation from the Executive of the United States, all slaves are free. This involves an absolute equality of personal rights and rights of property between former masters and slaves, and the connection heretofore existing between them becomes that between employer and hired labor. The freedmen are advised to remain quietly at their present homes and work for wages. They are informed that they will not be allowed to collect at military posts and that they will not be supported in idleness either there or elsewhere.

President Abraham Lincoln had issued the Emancipation Proclamation in January of 1863, freeing all slaves in the southern states, but it didn’t go into practical effect until the Union won the Civil War. You can’t enforce a law in a territory you don’t control.

It wasn’t until two months after Robert E. Lee surrendered in April, 1865, when the news got to Texas and the last enslaved African Americans were told about their freedom. And it was there, in Galveston, that the idea of Juneteenth took root.

While there was relief and joy in the immediacy of the proclamation, the former slaves started formally celebrating Juneteenth in Galveston the next year. Celebrations were initially held in churches, and “the original observances included prayer meetings and the singing of spirituals, and celebrants wore new clothes as a way of representing their newfound freedom.” They also included reading the Emancipation Proclamation.

The name, “Juneteenth” is a later designation. Throughout its history, the holiday has also been known as Freedom Day, Emancipation Day, Juneteenth National Independence Day, Black Independence Day, and Juneteenth Independence Day.

In the era following their liberation, however, African-Americans called their observance “Jubilee Day.” It refers to the biblical practice of every 50 years “when land was to be returned, debts forgiven, and enslaved people were to be set free. Announced by the loud blast of a ram’s horn, biblical scholars note, the Jubilee year was grounded in the idea of freedom, orchestrating an economic, cultural, and moral reordering of society.”

It’s based on Leviticus 25:8-55. Verse 10 reads,

Consecrate the fiftieth year and proclaim liberty throughout the land to all its inhabitants.

One report explains,

At the time, Texas was the farthest state West and the last to hear of freedom more than two years after President Lincoln’s Emancipation Proclamation. As the news spread, the shock for some 250,000 enslaved Texans quickly turned to celebration. Juneteenth combines the words ‘June’ and ‘Nineteenth,’ but according to Tisby it was originally referred to as Jubilee Day – a biblical reference [to] the book of Leviticus, which tells the story of how the Israelites celebrated their freedom from slavery in Egypt. Faith formed the foundation of what would become America’s most recent federal holiday. 

Unfortunately, it seems as though Juneteenth has, at least in part, become detached from its roots and is now becoming a secular observance that isn’t satisfied with just remembering that the slaves had been freed after a long and bloody war that produced some 650,000 casualties. “The question becomes, what does it mean to celebrate that freedom gained, and what freedoms now are still being sought after?“

That’s an open question that includes discussions of reparations and accusations of systemic racism and tension between the races. Dr. Ben Carson, former Secretary of Housing and Urban Development under president Trump, encourages us to learn from the past and to appreciate the present.

“Juneteenth is so important because it actually efficiently recognizes the emancipation of the slaves, and slavery was a horrible thing, there’s no question about it. But I think we need to recognize that slavery has been a part of virtually every civilization since there has been written history,” Carson explained …

He continued, “We in America have actually done something that no one else really did. That is, we had so many people who are opposed to it that we fought a Civil War, a bloody Civil War, lost a large portion of our population to get rid of this evil. And that says something about this nation as a people. We’re not all the same. We have a lot of different opinions but overall tendency was to move toward freedom and justice for people” …

“It would be very nice if a lot of the people who are complaining today about the United States could go and live in some other parts of the world for a little while, and I think they would have a tremendous appreciation of freedom we have and why it is so vitally important for us to not only understand it but to protect it for those who are coming behind us and particularly for our young people,” Carson said.

For now, the longest-running African-American observance is Juneteenth, which originally celebrated the end of slavery in the U.S. The celebration included singing spiritual songs, prayer meetings, and likely thanksgiving to God for their newfound freedom. That posture would be worth restoring on the day which commemorates the emancipation of our black brothers and sisters of that era.