The "'Black Lives Matter': Part I" Story

It was an ordinary day.  June 19th and for the first time in my 75 years of life I learned that today is known as Juneteenth!  It isn't something to brag about, but more like being ashamed of, since I never knew that day in history was known as Juneteenth.  Asked my wife when she heard about it and she said since she got her iPad a few years ago and saw it on the iPad calendar.  She said, "It's probably on the calendar that's back on your desk."  So, I checked out all three of the calendars I have in my office as well as the calendar that Carol has hanging in the kitchen, and not a single one has the date listed as Juneteenth.  Then the phone rang and as soon as I found out it was my friend Hal, who is a half-dozen years younger than me, I immediately asked him when he knew about Juneteenth.  "A few days ago," was his answer.  So, how about you, my readers?  When did you know?  I now know that Juneteenth is the oldest nationally celebrated commemoration of the ending of slavery in the United States.  A combining of "June" and "19th," it marks the day in 1865 when Union Army Maj. Gen. Gordon Granger delivered the new's in Galveston, Texas, that the Civil War had ended and the enslaved were free.  This was two and a half years after President Abraham Lincoln issued the Emancipation Proclamation on January 1, 1863. It paved the way for the permanent abolition of slavery in the United States.  As President Lincoln and his allies in Congress realized, emancipation would have no constitutional basis after the war ended, so they soon began working to enact a Constitutional amendment abolishing slavery.  By the end of January 1865, both houses of Congress had passed the 13th Amendment, and it was ratified that December.  President Lincoln said, "It is my greatest and most enduring contribution to the history of the war.  It is, in fact, the central act of my administration, and the greatest event of the 19th century."  But, it was actually on September 22, 1862 that President Abraham Lincoln issued the preliminary Emancipation Proclamation, which declared that as of January 1, 1863, all enslaved people in the states currently engaged in rebellion against the Union "shall be then, thenceforward, and forever be free."  He didn't actually free any of the approximately 4 million men, women and children held in slavery in the United States (Northern states) when he signed the formal Emancipation Proclamation the following January.  The document applied only to enslaved people in the Confederacy, and not to those in the border states that remained loyal to the Union.  Emancipation defined the Civil War, turning in from a struggle to preserve the Union to one focused on ending slavery, and set a decisive course for how the nation would be reshaped after that historic conflict.  Now, I'm sure that some of you probably knew about what I just typed, but did you also known about Juneteenth?  I just feel so bad about the fact that I didn't know about that date in history.  But then maybe I did know and had just forgotten about it.  Happens to people my age you know.  The following photographs show what life was like shortly after the Emancipation Proclamation had been enacted.  They are from a Pinterest posting.  I look at many of the newly freed people and wonder what they are thinking or what their plans were for their future.  I'm sure many are just as confused as I feel today.  It was another extraordinary day in the life of an ordinary day.

Federal troops arrived in Galveston, Texas in 1865 with the Emancipation Proclamation signed two and a half years earlier as depicted in this illustration.  Click on images to enlarge.

Crowds of people, recently freed from enslavement, carry copies of the proclamation  in this 1864 illustration.

The Union Commander's notice of the Emancipation Proclamation, as posted  for the citizens of Winchester, Virginia on January 5, 1863.

A rare October 8, 1868 illustration printed in the  Cincinnati Gazette reads, "Patience on a monument".  The illustration by Thomas Nast shows a freed man sitting atop a monument that lists evils perpetrated against black people.  A dead woman and children lie at the bottom of the monument, while violence and fires rage in the background.

Photograph of a group of formerly enslaved people at a country almshouse  in 1900.

Students and teachers stand outside the Greedmen's Bureau School in Beaufort, South Carolina, circa 1865.  Following the Civil War, several schools opened up for black families and literacy rates climbed steadily.

A formerly enslaved man and woman are shown at a plantation house in Green County, Georgia, 1937. 

Minerva and Edgar Bendy were formerly enslaved, but are now free in Woodville, Texas, 1937.

Work-weathered hands of Henry Brooks, a formerly enslaved man from Green County, Georgia, 1941.