Rethinking Juneteenth

The Truth About Juneteenth
by Thavolia Glymph

Juneteenth, widely celebrated throughout the United States, is now a commemorative holiday in 31 states. On Thursday the U.S. Senate passed a resolution apologizing for slavery and the long century of segregation and discrimination that followed its end. This, for some, long-awaited, and for others, disappointing, resolution appears to have been deliberately timed to pass on the eve of Juneteenth. It is unsurprising given the popular history of Juneteenth. And it is also troubling.

Juneteenth has in popular renderings come to be understood as the date Union Gen. Gordon Granger, arriving in Galveston on June 19, 1865, brought the news of emancipation and set Texas slaves free. From a strictly historical point of view one might think January 1, 1863, the date the Emancipation Proclamation was announced, or December 6, 1865, the date the 13th Amendment was ratified, would be more appropriate dates to commemorate.

Today, Juneteenth is celebrated as something even grander, a "holiday commemorating the end of slavery in the United States" or as the state of Virginia's 'Juneteenth State Holiday Observance Resolution of 2007,' put it, Juneteenth represents the day Gordon notified "the last enslaved Americans of their new status almost two and one-half years after the Emancipation Proclamation." Other state, senate and congressional resolutions and media accounts all offer up similar narratives. Strictly speaking, Juneteenth does not represent any of these things.

Read the Full Essay @ THE GRIO

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Thavolia Glymph is a professor of history and African and African American Studies at Duke University, specializing in Southern History. Her most recently published work is Out Of the House of Bondage: The Transformation of the Plantation Household (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2008), co-winner of the 2009 Philip Taft Book Prize.