Originally Juneteenth was the celebration of the Emancipation Proclamation, the first one was in 1865 in Texas, then called “Jubilee Day”. 

It is shameful that there needed to be such a proclamation. White American bluster for freeing enslaved people after four hundred years of knowing it was wrong.

And freedom? Another hundred and fifty years of Jim Crow drinking fountains, white only bathrooms, bus seats, and lynching parties would continue until the Civil Rights Act of 1964.

The South felt so strongly about preserving a slave owning society, and economy that they sent 250,000 of their boys (the number is much larger when you include Union troops, and civilians) to die for the cause in four years of bloody civil war. The south was decimated, but that didn’t change anyone’s mind about slavery.

They even killed a great visionary President who signed the audacious document that denied them the god given right to enslave black people.

That’s how much they wanted it.

Many Americans still want it. Many Americans would be excited to run off and fight another bloody civil war that could not possibly be won.

Even today, the Stars and Bars fly on trucks, and front yards down in Dixieland. Statues of Confederate traitors still stand as mute reminders that the racism was never vanquished. And to keep the notion of the “lost cause” alive, and the glory that those were the “good ole days”.

Freedom nowadays is a relative term as it exists today. There’s been some civil rights progress in 160 years. What rights that have been achieved by people of color has been through hard fought legislation, not by magnanimous hearts, suddenly enlightened by Godly kindness, but by laws, and education, and sometimes the National Guard.

White Americans helped some. Mostly it was courageous African Americans who worked, died, got beaten, and threatened, got pelted with eggs and rocks, and fire hoses. Still, they marched and lobbied, and got the job done.

The progress was long, hard work, from blood, sweat, and tears, to quote Churchill, but in this case literally, and violent.

They even killed the brilliant black leader, a man that comes once in a lifetime who preached peace, and equality, and justice for all people.

The racists were not going to give up their ugly white power, easily.

That’s how much they wanted it.