(gentle music) (gentle music continues) - A lot of people believe that Juneteenth was the time when the enslaved people in Texas finally found out that they had been emancipated, which means that some people think that the order that was promulgated in Texas on June 19th, 1865, was a continuation of the Emancipation Proclamation.

Well, it wasn't.

- But the Emancipation Proclamation declared that enslaved people in the Confederate states were free.

But since those states had succeeded from the Union, did they feel like they needed to obey any United States law?

No.

So, really, as people say, the Emancipation Proclamation and Abraham Lincoln freed the slaves, not true.

- And one of these stipulations was that any able-bodied person who wished to could join the Union Army, and if that hadn't happened, the Union Army would have failed, because at least 180,000 Black people fought in the Union Army for liberation.

Texas refused to surrender in April of 1865, and it was the Army of the Trans-Mississippi or something like that, so when this Major General of the Army finally came in and brought his troops into Texas, June 2nd of 1865, that was the end of the Civil War, a month or so, almost two months after the formal signing of armistice.

So then the major, Gordon, I think his name was, Granger, Gordon Granger, Major General Gordon Granger, he announced on several sites in Galveston, where the Union Army headquarters were, that all the slaves are free, period.

All the slaves are free.

And what's amazing is so many people think that this is when they found out that they were free.

Well, that's not what any real historian would ever agree to, because it assumes that Black people were ignorant, isolated, and did not have any methods of communication among themselves.

Well, that's simply not true, because the Underground Railroad worked all over the country and into Latin America, and all the way into the Pacific and into Canada.

People were carrying messages all over the place, and you didn't know it if you were the enslaver.

People knew it, but they couldn't do anything about it because there was no military support and they didn't have the opportunity to push back and declare their own liberation.

And here's one of the most interesting facts about the Juneteenth promulgation.

The last place that the Major General declared this was at the AME, African Methodist Episcopal Church, in Galveston, Texas, which is where they have used that site ever since as the main gathering point for the Juneteenth celebrations.

But it was founded in 1848.

And I have not only made the claim as a scholar myself, but I have seen other people agree with me, which is always unusual, that the AME Church was a significant part of the Underground Railroad enterprise, where they had their churches, and you can see evidences of it today as far north as Buffalo, New York, and down here into Tennessee and Georgia and Alabama and Texas, where people were going to run away or be hidden until they could get onto the Underground Railroad to freedom.

They had basement or cave settings where people could hide and then sneak away and escape.

So, the members of the Underground Railroad were often pastors, ministers, or church leaders.

When Harriet Tubman would go to Philadelphia to raise money for her abolitionist efforts, she went to Mother Bethel, the first AME church established in the north, and that's where they started singing "Go Down Moses", the spiritual, because that was her code name.

So you had the AME Church, and the last place that this order was promulgated was at the AME Church, which means that there were people coming back and forth because Black people had bought the land that that church was built upon in 1848.

So you had independent people, you had people who had some means of literacy and mobility, they knew about it, they were just frozen in their place.

(gentle music) - It really wasn't until the 13th Amendment to the Constitution was passed in 1865 that slavery was officially or legally abolished in the United States.

- But they decided, "You say we free?

Then we free.

And we're just gonna start acting like it."

And that's been part of what the tradition has always been.

When I know that I have my dream has come to fruition, that I'm gonna act like I... That was the principle behind slave narratives, behind the old songs.

I'm going to dream my freedom, I'm going to act my freedom, and then I'm gonna celebrate it.

And that's what people have been doing in Texas and other places around this country for years and years and years.

- If you could imagine your ancestors being enslaved, having no rights for probably about, what, 251 years?

And so those ancestors who survived we are today because they survived and they sacrificed and they worked hard.

So, we not only commemorate that slavery ended, but we recognize and celebrate their sacrifices and hard work of our ancestors.

So, I think it's important to celebrate that.

(gentle music continues) - Juneteenth is a very complicated day for me.

The reason it became a federal holiday was in response to George Floyd, Breonna Taylor, and other people, Ahmaud Arbery, all killed within weeks and weeks of each other.

And the uproar, the protests, the howling agony and trauma that those deaths and other deaths had finally culminated in forced people to realize that we've got to do something.

But it's a holiday that says this was the end of slavery.

Well, slavery never really has ended in the United States of America.

So, when slavery is ended, for me, that's a very complicated issue, because in all sorts of ways, it has not ended.

Okay, the enslavement of Black people, but they had Mexicans and indigenous people enslaved in Texas at the same time this order was promulgated.

And just because we have said they are free does not mean that we are going to actually enforce that.

So in Texas, some people stayed enslaved.

Unless they could run away, what were they going to do?

Just, they weren't gonna organize themselves into a Black militia.

So, okay, people were freed.

That's a great myth in America.

The United States believed that they were free.

Now we're celebrating Juneteenth.

This was the day that slavery ended, except that it really didn't.

So I have a very complicated day.

But what I do celebrate is how they survived, knowing that they had been legally emancipated, but could not physically demonstrate it.

How do I show you that I know more than you think I do?

How do I show you that I will survive no matter what your restrictions or complications are in my life or in the lives of my loved ones?

I have to find a way to be persistent and resist no matter what the options are.

And I'm going to do it regardless.

- I believe it's important, because honestly, other people probably aren't gonna celebrate it as much as you would.

So, to, you know, learn about your... What is it called?

Like, your culture, and to learn about, you know, who you are, and you're more than just, like, what your skin tone is, but other cultures and other celebrations, that may also help you figure out who you are as well.

I guess acknowledging that there are other people other than, you know, white people that have cultures to celebrate.

- Well, Juneteenth, we're celebrating us.

And now because of the, as I said before, the terrible, terrible violence and death that spilled around this country, from the time of Trayvon Martin to Michael Brown, to George Floyd and Breonna Taylor and others, we've got to have a reckoning.

I don't have to have a party, but I have to have a gathering in which we take serious, pay serious attention, and take a moment to honor the complexity of life and the brutality of violence and death.

And once we can do that, it's always going to mean something.

I think that the Juneteenth celebrations in the world that we're living in right now, politically, economically, and socially, has an incredible importance, Juneteenth does.

Because we're not gonna give up.

And even if it has not been completely according to the pronouncements of the law, we are going to be persistent.

- So the commemoration itself of Juneteenth does nothing (chuckles) but commemorate, right?

So, there is work to be done beyond the commemoration.

- But for me, on a very personal level, while I can appreciate and applaud other people who are gonna celebrate this day, but I would want them to always know, you're celebrating this somewhat in honor of what happened, but also in anticipation of what needs to happen.

(gentle music) (gentle music continues) So, the cycle of these things repeating themselves, each time, there has been an effort of resisting, counter activity, which allows America to get better.

We don't revert all the way back to the worst of it.

No, we don't get to the best possible, but we don't revert to the worst of it, because there are people who do remember.

And I need to tell people what they went through because I was able to hear the story.

What is a university, what is any school about other than going back and finding out that there was not only torture, death, and destruction, but there was liberation, rebuilding, and hope?

- I think Juneteenth and the history itself is the same, but a lot of people aren't aware of the history.

Recently, we as a country have been doing a big dialogue in terms of places like Florida, where they're seem to be whitewashing, eliminating Black history, and I say, I don't know how you can say teachers can't teach Black history.

Really, Black history is American history.

And so it's a matter of what you call it, but Black history is American history.

Should be taught in school because it's a big part of America.

And typically, when I hear politicians on TV, well-meaning, some of them, politicians, I'll make comments about, well, that's not what this country was founded on.

When in fact this country was founded on stolen land from Native Americans and stolen labor from African Americans who initially built this country.

And the truth is the truth, accurate history is accurate history, and I think it's important for everyone to have that true perspective of the history of this country, which isn't white history, Black history, Native American history, Asian American history, but American history includes it all, the good, bad, and the ugly.

- And right now, we are having the same thing that happened right after Juneteenth.

By 1867, when all the three amendments had been ratified, 1876, you have reconstruction.

(uplifting music) Within eight years, reconstruction was over.

Voting rights were being taken away.

Lynching was becoming prevalent.

We've gone through the same thing again in this country.

And it all comes down to what the Emancipation Proclamation said, what the pronouncement about Juneteenth said, and what the three Civil Rights Amendments said, people were given, men were given the right to vote.

What are we going through in this country right now?

As soon as Black men got the right to vote, they put 14 men into Congress as representatives.

They put thousands of people.

South Carolina had a majority of Black elected officials, from local all the way up to the Supreme Court.

They changed the nature of this country.

And then the votes were taken, the voting rights were taken away.

We're going through it again.

Once again, we're going to have to face the fact that we may not have to go into armed conflict, though people are trying to push us to that in some places, but we're gonna have to go into a steady, relentless commitment to, "I will resist injustice, I will persist to the end, and I will come out on the other side of the fire."

- You know, I think one of the terms we are using right now as a country is white privilege.

And a lot of people don't understand what is meant.

They see it as something negative.

I say white privilege is never, ever having to have an amendment to the Constitution or a law passed to give you rights as a citizen of the United States, right?

You know, some people automatically have rights that other people, we had to pass laws to give them certain rights, right, to be a citizen.

- And my mother once gave me this wonderful example, in a sense, wonderful, when a very racist person confronted us while we were having breakfast on a Sunday morning in Princeton, Indiana, and he came up and violated her personal space to tell her how much he appreciated colored people.

And I wanted to have an emotional and physical reaction to that, and she put her hand up my arm, and by just that gesture, said, "Sit still."

And when he left, when his wife dragged him away from our table, she said, "You can always be polite."

Well, that doesn't mean always just to show good manners, that means, don't put yourself in danger of death.

That's what it means.

That's a coded word in the Black community.

That's a variation of the thing that people always talk about, giving their children the talk.

You can always be polite.

Don't put yourself in danger of death for somebody who is not worth it.

Well, I think that I'm going to honor that for the people in Texas who said, "All right, you say we free?

We already knew it, but now I'm glad you done heard it.

We gonna act like it."

I ain't mad at nobody for that.

- We have people who are so disenfranchised that, you know, and I heard this before with the 2016 election, "I don't like either one, I'm not gonna vote."

So I think it's important that we talk about the importance of being involved, the importance of voting, because we have rights that are on the line in this and every election.

- The country we're living in has gone backwards.

(gentle music) Part of what the Emancipation Proclamation did was free them in those rebellious states, except for Tennessee.

Then the 13th, 14th, and 15th Amendments allowed Black men to vote.

Well, in those same southern states that were in rebellion, there is a great effort to reduce the opportunity to vote.

And if you are in jail, your voting rights have been taken away.

So guess what?

Some ways, I have to rejoice in the fact that my ancestors and our ancestors in the United States did not give up no matter what the obstacles were, no matter what the dangers were.

And if we can take a day and remember that?

Frederick Douglass, who pretty well lobbied, effectively, Abraham Lincoln to allow Black people to serve in the Army, he made that famous speech in Rochester, "What is the meaning of the 4th of July to the Negro?"

Well, you've got Juneteenth now, a day of survival, resistance, and hope.

That's what it means.

But I have to be realistic that why am I still thinking about strategies for survival?

Why do I still have to depend on hope?

Because the reality is not there for everybody.

(uplifting music continues) - Sure, we do have Black History Month, but it's the shortest month of the year, so it's like, oh, well, you know, you guys get an extra day, even though it just now recently became like a celebrated holiday, or if you can call it a holiday, 'cause not a lot of people know about it, which is strange, but I'm also a part of that crowd, 'cause (chuckles) it's only recently that it's like, oh, well, another day, you know?

It's like, oh, well, we're finally being acknowledged and celebrated, you know, instead of being pushed aside.

It's just like, "Oh, well, y'all got Black History Month."

(chuckles) "You can't ask for too much."

So, I would say, like, the acknowledgement of it being there would probably be a good start.

- The fact that it took the deaths of Ahmaud Arbery and George Floyd and Breonna Taylor and others to force the country to actually set aside, officially, Juneteenth as a national holiday, it was to say, "Okay, now be quiet, we've done this for you."

That has never worked, it never will work, and it ought to be a lesson that we're gonna come back for something else, because you didn't get it right.

You didn't do the deep, deep, complex, political, economic, and social and moral changes that are necessary.

I'm not doing this just for a takeout dinner.

I'm doing this because I'm not gonna forget why these people are important.

I'm not gonna forget that you didn't come through the first time.

But here's the most basic question.

We have still a civil rights movement.

Why in this country or anywhere on the planet should anybody be fighting for human rights or civil rights?

The fact that we are still doing that, well, we haven't made enough progress.

That's not my fault.

That's not the fault of all the people who have put themselves on the line to the point of possible death to say the most basic thing.

We are all children in the family of humanity.

(uplifting music) - I'm gonna keep repeating this, but probably acceptance of each individual person as a person, rather than having, you know, different sprouting holidays around the month or around the year.

It's like, oh, well, let's just celebrate being human, right?

Like, everyone's human, everyone's different, and it's good to acknowledge those differences, but it shouldn't be pushed forward to where it's like, oh, well, look at this person or look at that person, or this and that.

It's like, well, like you said, they're a person, so just acknowledging someone as a person rather than their race or their sexuality or their gender or any sort of disability they may have, it's like, well, I feel like just acknowledging, accepting, and being there for a person is a good start to it.

(uplifting music continues) I'd probably say that I wish I knew more, but at the same time, I'm seeing...

I wouldn't call it ignorance on my part, but I'm seeing just a lack of knowledge with the subject.

And I wish that really proves the point of getting it out there and learning about it, and just whether it's just a quick Google search on what it's about, or just something as simple as, like, asking a friend, which if we're the same age, we probably don't know, (chuckles) but it's just like, just getting out there and learning, that's one thing I would say, just learn about it.

You don't have to celebrate it, but at least get an understanding of it is what I would say.

- The fact is that a lot of people aren't aware of the history.

A lot of teachers aren't aware of the history, and you can't teach what you don't know.

And I believe, as a former retired educator, that a lot of our history isn't being taught in school anyway.

So, right now, we're at least having the discussion, and it's building an awareness that we aren't teaching it, people are trying to avoid the instruction, and so hopefully, that will galvanize some Americans to make sure that their students, some teachers, that their students are at least aware, or they will become more aware of themselves as well.

- You can learn from how people persist on in hope.

But you've got to tell the truth, and the truth in the United States of America is always, or if not always, quite often, uncomfortable until you claim it.

(uplifting music continues) Everything should be a catalyst, not only Juneteenth, but everything should be a catalyst for discussions about hope, equality, and completion.

Reparation, reconciliation, there is not a relationship in the world that doesn't demand that both people, or however many people in a relationship, everybody soon is gonna have to say, "I'm sorry, I made a mistake.

Can we go on with this now?"

And wouldn't our country and our culture be so much better off if we were into truth and reconciliation?

I'm not perfect, and you're not totally imperfect.

That's the truth.

- And even if you're not of that race, you can help acknowledge it, spread it around, let people know, like, "Hey, it's time to celebrate who you are as a person."

Also, just, hopefully it continues.

(laughs) - I think it's very important for us to pay attention to the complexity of what we celebrate.

I think it's very important for us to understand that everybody has a story and that all of us need to be able to ask for the stories before we tell people what they ought to believe.

I really do believe that we have learned from the most unexpected sources, and that if we know that, we should be using all of our creative energies to have more and more of those opportunities available for everybody.

(gentle music) (no audio)