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Juneteenth is the emancipation holiday now.
I will not say we shouldn't commemorate the end of slavery, I'm OK with there being a holiday for the most important victory the Republican party ever landed.
But June 19th?
The day when the Union Army finally got to the last, remote, expanse of the defeated Confederate States of America and posted notice of the nearly four year old Emancipation Proclamation.
A proclamation that didn't free all the slaves.
If only someone had written down when the 13th Amendment was passed and ratified. Alas! Oh, wait...
Still. It's a significant day in the history of the ending of slavery, even if it doesn't mark the actual end of slavery in the US.
It's part of OUR history. Every American. White people too.
It needs to be remembered that it took a lot of white people standing up and saying, "this is wrong, it should be stopped," for the practice to end.
It literally got to the point of "come and make me!" by the South and those same white abolitionists replying, "I'm your huckleberry." Then sending troops who were enslaved drafted to war...
The freedom commemorated here didn't materialize out of thin air.
By picking June 19 for the holiday, it actually underscores that the liberation of the slaves took place at gun point. I think some credit is due to those troops who showed up and said, "free your slaves or we'll kill you," because after hiking their asses to the most remote parts of Texas, they'd completely run out of humor about the topic.
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