Juneteenth

If you have Apple products and use the calendar, you know the holidays have included  Juneteenth every June 19 for some time. I’m so proud of that! And I’m even prouder that the president and vice-president declared Juneteenth a national holiday last week. On Thursday, emails were flying all over the corporate world—company policy moved fast and furiously. Juneteenth—now everybody knows what it means.

Well, I have to admit that I thought I knew the meaning of Juneteenth until a few years ago I learned I had it wrong. Wikipedia is our friend.

I thought Juneteenth was the anniversary of the Emancipation Proclamation, abolishing slavery in the United States. No! Lincoln signed the Emancipation Proclamation on September 22, 1862, and it became effective on January 1, 1863, during the fighting of The Civil War. 

The war continued after the proclamation until the truce was declared at Appomattox Courthouse as General Robert E. Lee surrendered on April 9, 1865. The news was suppressed or ignored in the Republic of Texas until very late April. Fighting continued through the surrender of the Army of the Trans-Mississippi and until the Union Army captured Galveston Island on behalf of the United States on June 18, 1865.

The very next day, the General Granger of the Union Army issued “General Order #3” declaring the emancipation of all enslaved peoples throughout the Republic of Texas. Here’s the text of the order:

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.

Texas became the first state to recognize Juneteenth as a state holiday in 1980 and most other states followed suit at least with a day of remembrance if not an official holiday except for Hawaii, Montana, and the Dakotas. Now it’s national—it’s official.

Quite obviously, there’s so much work on racism still to do in the US—clearly the Civil Rights movement made progress, but it feels like only just. We haven’t come that far since. Juneteenth is a good reminder.

I think about this all the time. While we have some diversity in our church, what does our church look like going forward? As we begin the discernment process starting this summer, how can we be more inclusive, more diverse? How can we be better? What steps could we, should we, be taking? 

The Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King is well-known for saying: “In the end, we will remember not the words of our enemies, but the silence of our friends.”

Let’s be thinking and praying on what kind of friends we are. 
There’s so much we can do. 
We cannot be silent!

Grace and peace,
Scott