The Juneteenth Conundrum

I'm all for making Juneteenth a national holiday, but ignorance about the day is often cast as part of the institutional racism in education. I don't think it's that simple.

Juneteenth was primarily a holiday in Texas, because that is where the specific context of June 19th comes from. June 19th is NOT the day "slavery ended." There really isn't a "day" when slavery ended.  Was it the day Lincoln issued the Emancipation Proclamation (September 22nd)? It didn't actually go into effect on that day, but rather January 1st. But the Emancipation Proclamation didn't actually free any slaves. It freed slaves in "areas of active revolt" as a war measure. Once Union armies moved into an area and rested it from Confederate control the slaves were "freed"...until Confederates re-occupied the territory.

Maybe the proper date is January 31st, the day the 13th Amendment passed Congress.  Or maybe it is December 6th when the 13th Amendment was ratified by the required number of states and was enshrined into the Constitution? It really took the 13th Amendment to finally and irrevocably end chattel slavery in the US...though a form of de facto serfdom emerged to re-subjugate the Freedmen.

It's not necessarily that Juneteenth is a "bad" holiday.  The Declaration of Independence was actually passed on July 2nd, but that hasn't mattered. And shouldn't we celebrate the Treaty of Paris if 1783 that actually guaranteed independence? Or the day we ratified the Constitution?

The debate over Juneteenth is whether we should have a holiday to celebrate the end of slavery.  We should. Making it June 19th is probably as good an idea as any, but I don't think ignorance of Juneteenth is a massive failure of our education system.  Juneteenth is simply the commemoration of a day when one group of African Americans in Texas was finally guaranteed their freedom. It speaks to the ways in which the White South endeavored to keep African Americans in some form of bondage, even after the war had been lost and the slaves freed. That should be covered in every history book by discussing the Black Codes, debt peonage and Klan terror.

I suppose if anything, the discussion over Juneteenth is a good way to examine how history can largely be an exercise of perspective. Slavery ended for one distinct group of people on June 19th, and that day was taken to symbolize something greater by a broader (but still distinct) group of people. The celebration of that day has increased and dispersed recently and now we can have a national discussion about it.

(I would prefer December 6th - the day the 13th was ratified - simply because it would fit perfectly into my teaching syllabus, but that's neither here nor there.)