Thread by @jessejholland

While I'm enjoying the newfound interest in celebrating #JUNETEENTH2020, let's not forget exactly what we're celebrating.
Juneteenth isn't the day African Americans were freed from slavery.
It's the day when African Americans FOUND OUT they had been freed from slavery.

The Civil War was over, Lee had surrendered at Appomattox and the defeated Confederates retreated back home to their farms and their plantations, knowing that they had lost and that the reason for the war, African American slavery, had come to an end.

But once back home, knowing their world had changed, did the white slave masters release their black slaves and wish them good luck? Or even try to negotiate a paid position for the men and women who fed them, provided their living and took care of their children?

Nope. Since they controlled the flow of news, they pretended like nothing had ever changed, just to wring a little more profit for those they had kept in bondage.
They lied and kept right on working their slaves.

Here's what some of the slaves said:
Julia Banks, born in San Antonio: "When my husband was about ten years old, his marster hadn't told them they was free. You know some of them didn't tell the slaves they was free until they had to.

More from Julia Banks: One morning, my husband said, he happended to look out and he saw a big bunch of men coming down the road, and he thought he never saw such pretty men in his life on them horses. They had so many brass buttons on their clothes it looked like gold.

Banks: So he run and told his mama, and she looked and saw it was soldiers, and some of 'em told the boss, and he looked and saw them soldiers comin' in the big gate and he called 'em in quick, and told them they were free.

So when the soldiers come, they asked him if he had told his slaves they were free, and he said yes.
They asked the Negroes if they lived there, and they said yes. One said, "He just told us we was free."

And this from Elvira Boles, who was dragged from Mississippi to Texas by her white master while pregnant:
We was a dodgin' in and out, runnin' from de Yankees. Marster said dey was running us from de Yankees to keep us, but we was free and didn't know it.

Boles: I lost my baby, it's buried somewhere on dat road. Died at Red River and we left it. De white folks go out and buy food 'long de road and hide us. Dey say we'd never be free iffen day could git to Texas wid us, but de people in Texas told us we's free."

While some did the right thing after the war, many white Southerners continued to enslave and abuse human beings for profit ONCE THEY KNEW IT WAS ILLEGAL.
They ensured slaves were illiterate, controlled the flow of information, and kept life-changing news from their victims.

Juneteenth and associated holidays like May 8 in Mississippi, was when the jig was up and the slave master, slave mistress and their supporters couldn't lie anymore. (Yes, many Southerners didn't own slaves, but they didn't tell the new citizens of color they were free either.)

So while #JUNETEENTH2020 is a positive celebration of freedom, let's not forget the questions the holiday teaches we must ALWAYS ask: Who are you getting your information from? Why are they telling you this? And what are they keeping from you?
#WordsMatter #JournalismMatters

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