THE TRUTH of the matter is it took our nation 158 years to recognize slaves for their contribution to America with a holiday that is now being celebrated by all Americans regardless of their race. African-Americans are truly looked up-to in America by many and throughout the world with genuine admiration and compassion for what our ancestors went through. But “We-as-a-people still have a ways to go before we find the Promise Land,” said Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.
But the Juneteenth celebrations began with enslaved people in Galveston, Texas as they were some of the last to learn about the Emancipation Proclamation. It was first celebrated at church picnics and speaking events and spread as Black Texans moved elsewhere. Although President Abraham Lincoln's Emancipation Proclamation freed the slaves in 1863, it could not be enforced in many places in the South until the Civil War ended in 1865. Even then, some white people who had profited from their unpaid labor were reluctant to share the news. Most freed slaves didn’t know what to do after being freed and many didn’t have any other option but to sharecrop for their previous slave master. There were even “sharecropping schemes” devised across the South to keep freed slaves on the plantations by overcharging them when crediting farming supplies, food products and things at the store and for everything else, thus keeping them “in-debt and on the plantation.”
My mother’s family suffered under the sharecropping scheme in Mississippi and they had to escape when her Papa (Isaac) “had to point a gun at their former master who was trying to stop them from leaving claiming Isaac still owed him for the mules pulling the wagon.” You can read about it in my book “MaDear” that is on sale at Amazon books. Juneteenth is also my wife and I meeting anniversary as we met 38 years ago on Juneteenth, so Juneteenth is truly special in our family. Wishing everyone a happy Juneteenth and a Blessed Family Day. One People One Direction.
AMBROSE M. BENNETT
Kagman III, Saipan
