Juneteenth for White Folks
I grew up with the narrative that President Lincoln freed the slaves.
“Emancipation proclamation issued January 1st, 1863. R. Russell (1865)
That story was neat and tidy, and much more heroic than what actually happened. The January 1, 1863 Emancipation Proclamation was an act of political expedience. In an open letter, Lincoln wrote “If I could save the Union without freeing any slave, I would do it, and if I could save it by freeing all the slaves, I would do it, and if I could save it by freeing some and leaving others alone, I would also do that. What I do about Slavery and the colored race, I do because I believe it helps to save this Union.”
The proclamation itself didn’t free the slaves— not all of them. It only applied to secessionist states that the Union had not yet retaken. The proclamation left slavery untouched in loyal border states like Delaware, Maryland, Kentucky, and Missouri, Union-occupied areas like Tennessee and lower Louisiana, and various other specifically named special-interest exceptions.
A handful of slaves gained freedom the day the proclamation took effect. But the proclamation was not self-executing. Even where it applied, slaveholders ignored the proclamation. It went unenforced in parts of Texas until June 19, 1865.
That day, two and a half years after the Emancipation Proclamation, a Major General rode into Galveston with 2,000 Union troops and read General Order No. 3 to the people of Texas.
Two and a half years of unpaid work to build this nation.
Two and a half years of babies sold out from their mothers’ arms.
Two and a half years of husbands stolen from wives. Two and a half years of torture for the sake of White wealth.
With any Google search of Juneteenth, it is easy to learn the name of the officer that brought the news. I haven’t seen a single source name any of the people he spoke to.
Pause to consider that even the history of Juneteenth centers a White man, calls him important enough to be named, but didn’t think to record the names of the people whom the storytelling says he acted upon and does not considered significant enough to be their own agents.
Then peel back that layer to read General Order No. 3.
It began by informing Texas that the people it enslaved (in the Land of Certain Inalienable Rights) are free. It announced “absolute equality of personal rights and rights of property between former masters and slaves.” And it concluded that “The freedmen are advised to remain quietly at their present homes and work for wages. They are informed that they will not be allowed to collect at military posts and that they will not be supported in idleness either there or elsewhere.”
General Order No. 3 (June 19, 1865)
Stop here.
Why does the order assume that the freedman will be idle? Why does it advise them to stay where they have been raped, beaten, tortured? See that our foundational documents— even the ones we celebrate— are cut from a fabric that assumes that White people know what is best for Black people. That assumes Black people will be troublesome. That assumes White folk are superior to Black folk. See that our foundational documents— even the ones we celebrate— are steeped in White supremacy.
Fast forward from 1865. Pause at 1892.
The Supreme Court decision reports that Mr. Homer A. Plessy was an “octoroon,” but we all know that the one-drop rule was and is. Mr. Plessy boarded the “White car” of a train in New Orleans in violation of Louisiana’s Separate Car Act. His protest was peaceful and purposeful, planned specifically to ask the Supreme Court the legality of White supremacy.
Marker at 701 Homer Plessy Way, New Orleans, Louisiana (December 12, 2018)
Four years later, the Supremes upheld the law 7-1. They held that segregation laws did not offend our Constitution because we have always had legal segregation. Read the full decision here.
The Fourteenth amendment, the Court said, simply “could not have been intended to abolish distinctions based upon color, or to enforce social, as distinguished from political, equality, or a commingling of the two races upon terms unsatisfactory to either.”
And what of the acknowledged fact that Mr. Plessy was ⅞ White? “If he be a white man and assigned to a colored coach,” the Court said, “he may have his action for damages against the company for being deprived of his so-called property. Upon the other hand, if he be a colored man and be so assigned, he has been deprived of no property, since he is not lawfully entitled to the reputation of being a white man.”
Not. Lawfully. Entitled. To. The. Reputation. Of. Being. A. White. Man.
Move ahead 68 years and northeast just twenty-some blocks.
After the Supreme Court abandoned segregation, recognizing (at last? again?) that “separate but equal” is, of course, “inherently unequal[,]” the Bridges family responded to the NAACP’s call. They volunteered their daughter Ruby to integrate William Franz Elementary School in New Orleans.
White families fled. None sent their children to the school. Not. One.
Every teacher but one refused to teach Black students. Just. One.
In the days that followed, a White family here and there returned to the school. But Ruby spent the year in an empty classroom, just her and one teacher.
Though the classroom was empty, the sidewalks outside were not.
You may have seen the photos, the animal anger, spittle dripping from the fangs of White mothers who hissed at the Black child who passed them. When one White mother tried to bring her children to school, the mob attacked her. Through this, you may have noticed Ruby’s power. Her grace. Her composure as she walked past the hateful crowd each day, twice a day, escorted by federal marshals who protected her from the crowd and from local police. We’ll come back to that. We always do.
Could your child do what Ruby did without shedding a tear? Could mine? Could I? Ruby was 6. Her father lost his job at the gas station. The neighborhood grocery store would no longer sell to the Bridges. And Ruby’s sharecropper grandparents were turned off their land.
Mural at 701 Homer Plessy Way, New Orleans< Louisiana (December 12, 2018)
60 years more. Ruby turned 65. Selena Gomez gave Ruby the keys her insta account to share never-before released footage of those school days. Take the two minutes to see how it was. The language of White hate is potent and acrid and violent and directed squarely at the child Ruby was precisely because that girl held the potential to become the woman Ruby grew to be. Notice Ruby’s power.
Step back and see that all these things exist at once.
Street art blooms across the street from the tracks of the train Mr. Plessy boarded. Ruby was, Ruby is, her ancestors were freed, not free, White supremacy was, White supremacy is, and what comes next is all in the gravel kicked down a New Orleans train track to the Supreme Court and back, but never really very far.
Today is Juneteenth in Minneapolis. It is:
404 years since the British first brought slaves to Virginia.
159 years since slaves in Texas heard of their freedom.
Almost 37 months since Minneapolis murdered George Floyd.
20 months since Mayor Frey campaigned on having already banned no-knock warrants.
Department of Justice Investigation of the City of Minneapolis and the Minneapolis Police Department (June 16, 2023)
19 months and 17 days since Minneapolis reelected Mayor Frey.
16 months and 17 days since Minneapolis Police killed Amir Locke while executing an actually-not-banned no-knock warrant.
14 months and 12 days since we decided not to charge Mr. Locke’s killer.
13 months and 23 days since the Minnesota Human Rights Commission issued its report noting the City’s longstanding habit of policing Black bodies—including children—with unrepentant violence.
3 days since the Department of Justice issued its report detailing how local police stop and injure and kill Black citizens at undeniably higher rates than White community members. Read it here. Sit with it. Sit with us.
And.
Today is Juneteenth in Minneapolis.
In the words of the National Museum of African-American History and Culture, “The historical legacy of Juneteenth shows the value of never giving up hope in uncertain times.”
Times remain uncertain.
Northern states are great at disclaiming their role in slavery. Minnesotans crow that they were a “free state.” But they ignore that slavers’ wealth built the state. And they forget that Dred met Harriet Scott while they were both enslaved at Fort Snelling.
As Shannon Gibney wrote in Fear of a Black Mother, “If living in Minnesota has taught me anything, it is that people will lash out at whoever tries to show what sits behind the appearance of things, especially if their own bias is the culprit.”
When Dred and Harriet Scott asked our courts whether living in a free state emancipated them, the Supreme Court answered, of course not. The Founding Fathers, you see, viewed these people as “as a subordinate and inferior class of beings who had been subjugated by the dominant race, and, whether emancipated or not, yet remained subject to their authority, and had no rights or privileges but such as those who held the power and the Government might choose to grant them.” Liberty and justice for some. Just ask the Minneapolis Police Department.
For my White folks (for myself): find a Juneteenth event. Go. Take your kids. When you get there: listen. Stay to the edges to make space for Black, brown, and indigenous bodies and voices.
Notice how it feels to be in a place that is not your own.
Take that with you tomorrow and each of the days after. Use that discomfort to push your learning. Draw on it to engage your White friend, neighbor, aunt who says things like “it was terrible, but I just can’t support…” or “I know we need reform, but don’t think we should defund...” or “but they shouldn’t protest with covid...” or “but what about Black on Black crime….” or or or.
Hear in each of those the voice of the White moderate who in 1861 said “If I could save the Union without freeing any slave, I would do it.” (Abraham Lincoln). Who in 1865 said “The freedmen are advised to remain quietly at their present homes and work for wages.” (General Order No. 3). Who in 1896 said the Fourteenth Amendment “was undoubtedly to enforce the absolute equality of the two races before the law, but, in the nature of things, it could not have been intended to abolish distinctions based upon color, or to enforce social, as distinguished from political, equality, or a commingling of the two races upon terms unsatisfactory to either.” (the Supreme Court). Who in 2023 said he “we need help changing and reforming this department,” but then appointed the insider who was Chief of Police when the department killed Amir Locke to lead “reforms.” (Mayor Jacob Frey).
And then hear the voice of James Baldwin: “People are trapped in history and history is trapped in them.” No, not that one. “One cannot claim the birthright without accepting the inheritance.” No, this: “[T]he past will remain horrible for exactly as long as we refuse to accept it honestly.”
So will the present.
For my White folks (for myself): this Juneteenth, as we wish well our Black brothers and sisters, our work is to push past the comforts of amnesia. To know that this history is our shared history, not “just African American history.” To see that our progressive politics are rooted in, and often still poisoned by a foundation of White segregation from our Black and brown brethren. To feel deeply, in the core of our pancreas that White moderation very literally sentences our Black family to death. To hold, 60 years after its publication, that “[t]he ultimate tragedy of Birmingham was not the brutality of the bad people, but the silence of the good people.” Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., Why We Can’t Wait.
Mural at 701 Homer Plessy Way, New Orleans, Louisiana (December 12, 2018)