![]() As my father’s jibe suggested, the legacies of slavery still lingered, putting true freedom out of reach. Amid joy and hope was great malevolence and power. Former enslavers unleashed violence upon the people whom they had claimed as property, and others threatened to do so in order to make people work. Freedom had come in legal terms, but the story was not so clear on the ground as it was on paper. Those who had heard were often forcibly prevented from acting as if any material change had taken place. ![]() Even after Granger’s announcement, many whites in Texas continued to enslave people who had not heard the news. Confederate forces in Texas did not surrender until June 2, 1865. The Emancipation Proclamation had, in fact, been signed more than two years before, but its provisions could only be applied in areas controlled by the U.S. The jokes played upon several basic truths. My father would say, with a sardonic smile and a short laugh, that it was worse than that: “the slaves have never really been freed.” The older people joked that the Emancipation Proclamation had actually been signed two years before, but “the white people” wanted to get a few extra harvest seasons in before they told “the Negroes” about it. Army general who announced, in Galveston, on June 19, 1865, that slavery was over, was told with seriousness and bits of gallows humor. In my small town, the story of Gordon Granger, the U.S. ![]() When I was a little girl, in Texas, I thought Juneteenth belonged to us, meaning to the state of Texas generally and to black Texans specifically. ![]()
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |