Rant #2,398: Free Me

Happy Wednesday,

Today is hump day, and we have to get through today, the middle of the week, to get to the end of the week on Saturday.

But really, hump day signifies the middle of the work week, and we have to get over today to get to the end of Friday.

Yes, we all work for the weekend, unless we have to work on the weekend, which my wife does this coming Saturday.

Happily, she is off on Sunday, but having one day on and one day off does nothing to soothe the senses.

So, happy hump day and happy Juneteenth.

Ehh ... Juneteenth ... what the heck is that?

It is amazing to me that I just discovered this holiday, that today, June 19, is a very important day in the annals of this country, but I did, and I will bet that most of you have no idea that this holiday existed, either.

Simply put, Juneteenth, which is also known as Freedom Day or in its longer form, Juneteenth Independence Day, is an American holiday that commemorates the announcement on this date in 1865 that slavery had been abolished in the state of Texas, and more importantly, the emancipation of slaves throughout the former Confederate States of America.

Juneteenth is actually recognized as a state holiday, or at least a day of observance, in 45 of the 50 states of the union, but I don't think those states include New York, because I honestly never heard of this holiday until today.

According to Wikipedia, the day is observed in local celebrations, and traditions include public readings of the Emancipation Proclamation, the singing of songs that were popular with the slaves, and the reading of writings by popular black authors.

The date is also celebrated with street fairs, family reunions, and cookouts.

Nope, I never heard of this holiday before discovering it just the other day and deciding that I would write about it when the day came.

Perhaps blacks in my neck of the woods know about this day more than I do, because Juneteenth, obviously, might have impacted their ancestors directly,

One of the reasons that the American Civil War was fought was because the north was pretty much against slavery and the south was not, but let's be very 2019 here, the reasons for the War Between the States had much more to do with other factors, many of them economic, than it had to do with freeing those bound by slavery. Slavery was certainly part of the equation, but while it is nice to say that President Abraham Lincoln freed the slaves, he did do that, but as a byproduct of the North winning this war.

Whatever the case, when Gen. Robert E. Lee surrendered to the Northern forces on April 9, mechanisms were put into place to join the two warring factions into the union it had previously had, and the slaves were emancipated as part of that deal. That kind of simplifies the whole thing, but within the context we are working with today, that is pretty much what happened.

In many places, slaves danced in the streets at the announcement of their newly won freedom, and this is how Juneteenth really began, as a celebration of this freedom, and a remembrance of the toil and blood spilled leading up to this magic moment.

Again, perhaps some of my readers of color know well more about this holiday than I do, but I also read that there is a movement to make Juneteenth a national celebration with a Congressional declaration.

So, happy June 19, happy Juneteenth, and have a good day. I hope you learned as much as I did about this day, and I will speak to you tomorrow.

Here comes summer!