This coming Saturday, June 19th, we celebrate Juneteenth, recognizing the actual end of slavery in the U.S. The story behind this important date in our history underscores how America’s past isn’t as simple as our grade school textbooks often made it out to be.
Due to President Abraham Lincoln’s Emancipation Proclamation in the fall of 1862, at the stroke of midnight on January 1, 1863, all enslaved people across the country were declared legally free. Union soldiers, many of whom were black, marched onto plantations and across cities in the south, reading small copies of the Emancipation Proclamation, spreading the news of freedom in Confederate States.
But not everyone in Confederate territory would immediately be free. As the war moved to its final stages, there were still parts of the South remaining in Confederate control. Freedom for all formerly enslaved people finally came on June 19, 1865, when some 2,000 Union troops arrived in Galveston Bay, Texas. The army announced that the more than 250,000 enslaved black people in the state were free by executive decree. This day came to be known as "Juneteenth" by the newly freed people in Texas.
Only through the Thirteenth Amendment, ratified at the end of 1865, did emancipation become codified in our Constitution.
Juneteenth is an opportunity for reflection and honest conversation about the ongoing impact of slavery in this country and the lingering reality of racism still alive in all its ugliness today. Although we should all feel incredible pride and appreciation for living in a country as free as this one, history is far more complicated and unsettling than what is told by those school textbooks that formed the basis of what most Americans know about their history. How many of us learned in school about the Tulsa, Oklahoma massacre in 1921 or the fact that slavery lingered for more than two years after the Emancipation Proclamation?
History and our shared American experience is complicated, and it requires both an openness to uncomfortable truths and a capacity to learn from our past to find a better path forward.
Likewise, the Y’s history is full of incredibly positive moments worthy of celebration and pride, but it is also the history of our country, in all its complexities and fault lines.
Today, our imperfect but vitally important Y is committed to continuously working toward a more equitable and inclusive community and workplace, using our capacity as a convener of people from all walks of life to help achieve a “more perfect union” for all.
All the best,
John
John K. Hoey
President & CEO
The Y in Central Maryland