Today is Juneteenth, the day that Black slaves in Texas were informed that they were supposed to have already been emancipated two and a half years earlier.
If this surprises you, it's good that you're reading this. 1/10
Even after this official Texas proclamation on June 19th, 1865, it still took as long as 3 more years for the final slave to be informed of that they should have been freed, when a horse thief was hanged in 1868 and his slaves were let go. 2/10
Back to the proclamation. It says "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." 3/10
So after nearly 250 of being used for hard labor like cattle, treated like property, subjected to endless abuse, and robbed of their names, their culture, their entire way of life, they are told that they should just stay where they are, and not be lazy. 4/10
We see a similar treatment to this day by authority figures towards POC. They're told they're lazy, when in fact occupation licensing laws, the war on drugs, & other barriers render them unable to move ahead, making them choose between abject poverty or a life of crime. 5/10
They're told not to be violent, while the state criminalizes them as early and often as possible, herds them into prisons to do free labor to profit the state governments and their publicly-traded prison contracting corporations (Video on the 13th Amendment coming soon). 6/10
They're told to stay where they are, and not to resist, and to do as they are told, while they watch their loved ones being casually murdered by the people who presume authority of them. 7/10
POC are told, essentially, that it's kind of their fault, or at least that their actions haven't helped.
This is gaslighting and victim-blaming, nothing more and nothing less.
But that's not what this day is about. 8/10
Juneteenth is a celebration of the final moment that a people whose ancestors were brought here in chains, that the process of their unshackling had finally begun. 9/10
It is a process that continues on to this day, right now, in cities around the world, and it is an honor to help tell their story to others.
Happy Juneteenth.
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