“The people of Texas are informed that, in accordance with a proclamation from the Executive of the United States, all slaves are free. This involves an absolute equality of personal rights and rights of property between former masters and slaves, and the connection heretofore existing between them becomes that between employer and hired labor.”— Proclamation made in Galveston, Texas, June 19, 1865
I wonder how the slaves who had kept Galveston running felt when they woke up on the morning of June 19, 1865 and found out they were free. Joy at finally being free? Anger that they should have been freed two-and-a-half years earlier, but their masters never told them? Fear over how their treatment at the hand of their former masters would change, or not, now that they were considered hired employees and not purchased property? Did their masters even know how to treat them as fellow humans and not as property to be bought, used, and sold? Surely they realized that it wouldn’t be as easy as flipping a switch. They knew that there would be difficult days ahead. I wonder what it felt like showing up for work on the first day of this very new arrangement. How did the former slaves and the former masters treat each other? Was their day characterized more by angry words or by icy silence? What was it like going back to their dwellings that evening, no longer as slaves but as freed men and women? I wonder what stories they told and what songs they sang and what prayers they prayed as they sat around their campfires on that hot summer night in Texas. I wonder if they were laughing or crying, joyful or bitter, fearful or celebratory. I wonder if they had heard a peep out of their former masters. I wonder if the mosquitoes were biting. I wonder if the moon was full. Were there children running around, laughing and playing? Were there babies crying? Was the air filled with the scent of something really good being cooked over the open campfires? Were there angry young men planning to storm out of town at the crack of dawn while their weeping mothers were pleading with them to stay a little longer and wait for the dust to settle? I wonder what June 19, 1865 was really like in Galveston, Texas— 156 years ago tonight. It is fitting that we think about these things. It is fitting that we remember. It is fitting that we try to understand, as best we can, what can only be truly understood by those who experienced it— and perhaps by their children, and their children’s children. Behind every holiday there is a story, and behind most stories there are heartbreak and sorrow and fear and anger and despair as well as joy and hope. That’s just the way it is under God’s heaven. That being said, the slaves were freed, and a celebration is in order. Happy Juneteenth! We celebrate, but not without the pain of remembrance, and not without the heavy awareness that there is much work that is yet to be done. “Truly He taught us to love one another; His law is love and His Gospel is peace. Chains shall He break, for the slave is our brother; and in His name all oppression shall cease.” — Lyrics to the Christmas carol “O Holy Night” by Adolphe Adam and J. Dwight “Is it such a fast that I have chosen? A day for a man to afflict his soul? Is it to bow down his head as a bulrush, and to spread sackcloth and ashes under him? Wilt thou call this a fast, and an acceptable day to the LORD? Is not this the fast that I have chosen? To loose the bands of wickedness, to undo the heavy burdens, and to let the oppressed go free, and that ye break every yoke? Is it not to deal thy bread to the hungry, and that thou bring the poor that are cast out to thy house? When thou seest the naked, that thou cover him; and that thou hide not thyself from thine own flesh?” — Isaiah 58:5-7
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