June 19th, dubbed Juneteenth, is the date General Order No. 3 came to Galveston Island, Texas, announcing the end of the U.S. Civil War and the total emancipation of all chattel slaves from the Confederacy.
Usually, the holiday is celebrated with church services, rallies, parades, rodeos, street fairs, cookouts, picnics, family reunions, partying, historical reenactments, Miss Juneteenth contests and other festivities.
However, those of us who are chattel slave descendants who question black freedoms tend to focus solely on our experiences of suffering and liberation. As U.S. citizens, we often feel our liberators have forgotten in this uniquely American story.
Consider these details:
- Union General Gordon Granger and his 2,000 federal troops who brought the message of liberation to Galveston Island, Texas
- Hundreds of thousands of Republican party members, Yankee Union Troops, who were killed and who died from disease in the U.S. Civil War as well as President Abraham Lincoln
- Other patriot, white Americans who advanced our cause, including the architects and original fathers of all Civil Rights movements. They enacted Lincolns’ 13th, 14th (1866 Civil Rights Act), 15th Amendments and the anti-KKK Acts, all during the 1865 to 1877 Reconstruction Era.
- The sincere congressional effort of the Apology Resolution HR # 194 for reconciliation.
For too long, we have failed to thank God for our grand existence in this free country and for His white children. He used their deaths to liberate us from the African Slave Trade and 245 years of British-U.S. chattel slavery institution, as well as Jim Crow-ism.
Instead, due to ignorance of facts and foolish leadership, we have unknowingly demonstrated a disgruntled criticism of God, His handiwork on our behalf and the meaningful efforts of white citizens in general by protesting what they have and have not done to or for us.
In our view, HR # 194 is not so much for our white brethren as it is for us black citizens to forgive others, along with being thankful to them in general for what we have been granted by the judge of all the earth and to begin utilizing it to its fullest.
Like our ancestors, who initiated Memorial Day to honor the white folks who died for us in the Civil War, let’s make this Juneteenth a spirit-attitude change by following their heartfelt example in acknowledging and appreciating those Americans who, in vindication of our ancestors, made our existence today as free people possible.
Therefore, it behooves black Americans, who are 14th Amendment super-citizens, to inspire all Americans to finish where Lincoln and company left off, if God allows us to save our Union, our republic.
As the nation approaches the 50th Commemoration of the MLK assassination, it’s time for the sons of former slaves and slaveowners to come sit at the MLK “Table of Brotherhood” together.
There the brothers prioritize their good social works in order “to more perfect the Union,” and eliminate its divisive, chattel slavery-Jim Crow, generations-destroying, so-called race wound.
As a Judeo-Christian nation, especially as black citizens, it is incumbent upon us to vigorously respond to the Congressional Apology Resolution HR # 194, apply the First Principles of Salvation. Then “We Shall Overcome” our woes and the Union, “shall not perish from the earth.” {eoa}
