Free at last is a work in progress
“Celebrations of Juneteenth, the new federal holiday that honors the emancipation of enslaved people in Texas, are growing amid a general backlash on civil rights and discussions on racism,” Axios reported earlier this month. Corporations including Amazon and Verizon have “ended or reduced their support for Juneteenth celebrations this year” amid the Trump administration’s complaints of “anti-white racism”.
Nevertheless, observations expand around the country:
Zoom out: Portsmouth, the New Hampshire city where an enslaved woman escaped President George Washington’s pursuit, will host a gathering for Juneteenth of direct descendants of some of America’s founding fathers and the people they enslaved.
- Oakland, Calif.-based Red Bay Coffee will release this month a “Juneteenth Limited Release” coffee named Intango Rwanda, a light-medium roast grown high in the hills of Gatagara Village by the Dukunde Kawa Cooperative.
- The Library of Congress commemorate Juneteenth with a “program focused on the themes of family and home.” The library will encourage visitors to meet a staff expert from the Manuscript Division, and learn about items from the Library’s Abraham Lincoln Papers.
- Organizers in Houston, north of Galveston, Texas, the site of the original Juneteenth, will host a series of events including a cook-off and a tour of historic Black neighborhoods.
- Portland, Ore., will play host to another Black rodeo on Juneteenth.
State of play: The rapid commercialization of Juneteenth comes as some states pass laws limiting the discussion about enslavement in public schools and as some GOP lawmakers press for the return of Confederate monuments.
Some in this country don’t want all “boats” lifted. They view the world as a zero-sum game. Equality for all feels like oppression. Some of us need others below us on the social ladder to feel better about ourselves. Racism on some level isn’t about race at all. It’s about power. Skin color is simply a handy shortcut for picking out those in the room beneath you.
Juneteenth is a celebration of an entire class of Americans liberated, at least on paper, from hundreds of years of enforced beneathness. Healing the legacy of beneathness for the once enslaved and their ancestors is an ongoing project.
Two genealogy sites are adding troves of historical materials about enslaved people in the U.S. to databases, which could give many of their descendants a fuller picture of their families’ histories.
- The moves come as the nation on Thursday celebrates Juneteenth, the annual celebration of the end of slavery.
Why it matters: In recent years, descendants of enslaved people have gained unprecedented access to collections of long-lost family records online — made possible by advances in technology, AI, and DNA testing.
Sites Axios mentions:
Ancestry.com announced last week that it will significantly expand its free Articles of Enslavement records collection — an archive of newspaper articles documenting the experiences of enslaved people in the U.S.
Michigan State University announced this week it’s publishing new data on its “Enslaved: Peoples of the Historical Slave Trade” website, Enslaved.org.
Those sites join efforts like those of the Slave Deeds Project begun in 2013 by our county register of deeds. Drew Reisinger digitized his office’s paper records of people once held here as “property.” Those documents make it easier for people to trace their family heritage, at least on these shores.
Talk about privilege, white people take for granted knowing something about our family histories. Not so for ancestors of the enslaved. I wrote about my awakening to that here. I ran into my friend again at our local “No Kings” protest on Saturday. Her name was among the 67,000 whose votes were challenged by Judge Jefferson Griffin in his failed attempt to legally overturn his North Carolina Supreme Court race loss in November.
Free at last remains a work in progress.
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