Juneteenth in the Heartland

The State:


Kentucky Gov. Andy Beshear signed a proclamation Thursday recognizing Juneteenth and said he will encourage lawmakers to pass a bill next year to recognize it as a state holiday.

Juneteenth commemorates when the last enslaved African Americans learned they were free 155 years ago. On June 19, 1865, Maj. Gen. Gordon Granger led Union soldiers into Galveston, Texas, to bring news that the Civil War had ended and that all enslaved African Americans were free.

“During these times when again we have heard voices and we have seen the frustration of hundreds of years of ramifications of slavery, discriminations, Jim Crow, of segregation, I think it’s more and more important that we remind everybody of this dark chapter in our history and that its impacts continue to linger,” Beshear said. “We should celebrate the dates that at least portions of that dark chapter ended.”

On Wednesday, the small Kentucky city of Midway made Juneteenth an official holiday, the Courier Journal reported. Midway Mayor Grayson Vandegrift said the move is a way to honor black residents in the city and to bring people together for more than just a conversation about equality.

“It’s become clear that while talking is good, it’s just never gonna be enough,” Vandegrift said. “We got to do more than talking. So what’s one little way that a small city of 1,811 people can help? And that’s to take some action. And I think, hopefully, set some kind of precedent that I hope we see spread around the state.”



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103 thoughts on “Juneteenth in the Heartland”

  1. wiki:

    After Texas recognized the date in 1980, many states followed suit. By 2002, eight states officially recognized Juneteenth and four years later 15 states recognized the holiday. By 2008, nearly half of US states observed the holiday as a ceremonial observance. Forty-nine of the 50 U.S. states and the District of Columbia have recognized Juneteenth as either a state holiday or ceremonial holiday, a day of observance. The only state that does not recognize Juneteenth is Hawaii.

     

    Date of recognition:

      Recognized before 2000
      Recognized between 2000 and 2009
      Recognized in 2010 or after

     

     

  3. question:

    like cinco de mayo, will Juneteenth also be hi-jacked,  commercialized and become just another excuse for a party at the neighborhood bar?

  4. oh, BTW

    wapo:

    Sen. Amy Klobuchar (D-Minn.) said Thursday that she has urged former vice president Joe Biden, the presumptive Democratic nominee, to pick a woman of color as his running mate, effectively withdrawing herself from consideration.
    “After what I’ve seen in my state, what I’ve seen across the country, this is a historic moment and America must seize on this moment,” Klobuchar said Thursday night on MSNBC. “I truly believe, as I actually told the vice president last night when I called him, that I think this is a moment to put a woman of color on that ticket.”

  6. Yesterday I again watched “Trumbo”.  Last night I watched HBO’s new documentary “Bully, Coward, Victim, The Roy Cohn story.

    I recommend both as a lesson in “we’ve been here before”, but particularly the documentary.  All the characters we are dealing with now are there including what most of us knew about Trump a long, long time ago.

     

  7. Throw in “Boogie Man”.  An excellent documentary about Lee Atwater, a goober moo-jician from Columbia, SC; who, but for a simple twist of fate, would have been playing “Mustang Sally” in a joint somewhere most of his life.

  10. Cleveland plain dealer‘s jeff darcy:

    CLEVELAND, Ohio — Many Americans are learning for the first time that there has been two Independence Days celebrated in the United States. The official July 4th national holiday and the unofficial holiday of “Juneteenth” celebrating the end of slavery on June 19, 1865, which should now be made an official holiday as a bipartisan group of Senators and Representatives have called for.
    It was on this day in 1865 that Union General Gordan Granger announced in Galveston, Texas that the last remaining slaves in the state were free, more than 2 years after President Abraham Lincoln had signed the Emancipation Proclamation on January 1, 1863 and the Civil War was nearly over.
    Because Texas was the most remote of the southern slave states, news and full enforcement of the Emancipation Proclamation had not reached the state until June, 1865.
    On December 6, 1865 the 13th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution was signed abolishing slavery in the United States and it’s territories.
    But it hasn’t been December 6, 1865 or January 1, 1863 that has come to be celebrated annually as “Freedom Day”, “Jubilee Day”, “Liberation Day” and/or “Black Independence Day” it has been Juneteenth.
    Juneteenth has long been an official state holiday in Texas and is either a state holiday or day of observance in 49 other states.
    A bipartisan group of U.S. Senators and Representatives have called for Juneteenth to be made a federal holiday. Republican Senator John Cronyn and Democratic Representative Sheila Jackson have introduced bills for the designation in the Senate and House, as will Senators Kamala Harris, Cory Booker, Tina Smith and Ed Markey.
    The bills should be passed with the designation of Juneteenth as a national holiday long overdo just as news of the Emancipation Proclamation had been to those enslaved in Texas on June 19, 1865.

  13. A thought from an African American twitter friend.

    Juneteenth thought: Recommend not turning it into a day of service. It literally is a celebration of the end of forced, brutal, unpaid labor. Allow it to be restful & celebratory.

    So  maybe compare it to the Fourth of July? 
    Jack
     

  15.  

    Mary & Misty.  The oldest and most recent of the great greatgrandgirls

    We have Melody, Mabel & Miranda in between

     

  17.  
    An excellent essay in the New Yorker about Trump and Juneteenth.

    In honoring that moment, we should recognize a moral at the heart of that day in Galveston and in the entirety of American life: there is a vast chasm between the concept of freedom inscribed on paper and the reality of freedom in our lives.
    In that regard, Juneteenth exists as a counterpoint to the Fourth of July; the latter heralds the arrival of American ideals, the former stresses just how hard it has been to live up to them.

     

  18. sturge, if you cropped, enlarged, printed on canvas and ornately framed that 1st picture, it almost could pass  for a classic de Vinci or Botticelli knock-off.

    probably get it done for around 25 bucks at wally’s world photo –  make great present for the grown baby.

  19. now if we can only come up with a suitable celebration for native americans

    giving back manhattan, texas and new mexico might be a good place to start

  20. I just skimmed the DACA decision to see what it actually did and what next steps lie ahead.  There is an opening for DHS to, upon remand, do what it did not do that led to the decision yesterday – to adequately explain its reasons for ending the program. Of course there would be an injunction issued in at least one case as the issue winds its way back through the federal courts, and it would not be likely to get back before SCOTUS within the next 8 months.  Assuming that Biden is elected and the cases languish for half a year before becoming ripe for Cert, DACA will remain on the books and unless I miss my guess, will be expanded.  The bottom line for DACA is that in order for something like a compassionate version of it to percolate and provide an avenue for existing and future Dreamers, as both the majority and the dissents pointed out, Congress must act to make DACA part of immigration law rather than an exception to it. 
     
    The good news is – except for those Hispanic voters who somehow think that kids who are brought here by their parents and know this as their country should be sent back to the country they were born in, SFB won’t get what little of the Hispanic vote he might otherwise have gotten.  Texas, do I hear you calling?

  21. I’m not sure I needed this laugh, but I did it anyway:

    When u think that 2020 can’t get worse the next 5 months spell J.A.S.O.N

  22. FYI. today, after 111  daily virus briefings (all of which must have really made tRUMP mad), will be gov Cuomo’s last.  he says he will have a special message.     maybe he’ll moon don the con on camera… of course wearing a mask while doing so.

  23. Sturg…  both babies are beautiful!
     
    I don’t have a problem with today being made into a holiday….  but I do agree that it will probably be made into whatever’s selling then type of thing.   Here in the northeast…  MLK’s birthday is advertised as a big ski weekend.

  24. A bit of Texas history from the Star-telegram
    It was June 19, 1939 — Juneteenth.
    The mob had been gathering for three days, throwing rocks at the newcomers’ home.
    By the night of Juneteenth, only Lee’s father, railroad worker Otis Flake, remained inside. Police warned him not to shoot anyone, then stood by and watched the attackers invade.
    “They tore the house all up, then they set it on fire,” Lee said.
    In a life of civic leadership, Lee has rarely talked about the hate crime except to her family and close friends, not even in her meetings with President Barack Obama or in 2017 news coverage of her one-woman “Walk Across America” to Washington promoting a national Juneteenth holiday.
    She is never resentful. She is resolute.
    “The fact that it happened on the 19th day of June has spurred me to make people understand that Juneteenth is not just a festival,” she said last week.
    Juneteenth is a day of joy for all America. It’s the day we gained true liberty, with the arrival of the U.S. Army in Texas to free slaves after Confederate surrender.
    “It should be a unifier. … The slaves didn’t free themselves. It took all kinds of people — Quakers, abolitionists — to get the slaves free,” Lee said.

     


     
     

  26. patD – A suitable day for native Americans would be to rebrand  Columbus Day as Indigenous People’s Day, everywhere, for a start.  Then, provide whatever services are needed to make their lives better because, as with slavery, what’s done can’t be undone.  Gotta start from where we are now.  
    Cute T’Mix babies, and I’m not typically an ooo-aaaawer of wee ones. 
    Not sure if local PBS stations program shows the same, but tonight they are airing a one-woman play about the bestest, TX Gov, Ann Richards.  “Ann,” airs tonight at 8pm CDT.   

  29. Important part of Juneteenth history is that is celebrates what the rest of the US knew for a year before slave owners in Texas did the right thing
    I never heard of Juneteenth until I was in my 30s  I friend from Texas told me about it.  It never came up in any US history I had.

  31. The schools sure as shit kept quiet about the Tulsa Black Wall Street massacre.  i learned about that a few years, ago, from a young black man.
     
    i was like “Really?!  Are you sure?!  Why have i never heard about this?!”
     
    (i ran straight to trailmix.cc to spread the word, ofc)

  32. I can’t recall when I first heard of Juneteenth, but I was a full on adult. I don’t believe I ever heard anyone mention the Tulsa massacre or Juneteenth when I was in school at any level, elementary high school college or graduate school.

  33. Learned about Juneteenth in childhood, but not the Tulsa Massacre until an adult.   So much of black history is simply not mentioned.  I was lucky to have the mother I did.  For me “Uncle Remus” was Joel Chandler Harris retelling African folk tales.  “Little Black Sambo” was a story about the British Raj in India.  Context and emphasis are everything when it comes to prejudices.  

  34. I think there are a lot of instances of mass murder by white people against black people in the US.   I have a vague awareness.
    when people tell me the tributes to people who were horrible human beings should remain.  I say students inGermany are required to learn about the Nazis but there are no statues or any other kind of memorials.  People have a romanticized version of the Civil War based on fictional accounts.

  36. sturge, I was thinking madonnas (well, in this case mr. Madonna) of whom those 2 painted a lot, but can’t remember seeing any by Renoir – only rather fulsome/wholesome looking ladies of questionable virtue. 

  37. politico:

    President Donald Trump called mail-in voting the biggest threat to his reelection and said his campaign’s multimillion-dollar legal effort to block expanded ballot access could determine whether he wins a second term.
    The president’s assertion that mail-in voting will endanger his reelection comes as states across the country are rushing to accommodate remote voting in response to the coronavirus pandemic. Millions of voters could be disenfranchised if they decide to stay home on Election Day rather than risk contracting the virus at crowded polling stations.
    But Trump and his campaign argue, despite a lack of evidence, that widespread mail-in voting will benefit Democrats and invite fraud. The Republican Party is spending tens of millions of dollars on a multifront legal battle.
    “My biggest risk is that we don’t win lawsuits,” Trump said. “We have many lawsuits going all over. And if we don’t win those lawsuits, I think — I think it puts the election at risk.”

  38. wapo:

    TULSA — As thousands of Trump fans and protesters poured into this city in advance of President Trump’s first campaign rally in months, authorities imposed a curfew as fears of potential violence mingled with anxiety about a spike in new cases of coronavirus.
    Metal barricades went up around downtown and police cars began blocking off streets after Tulsa announced a last-minute curfew for the downtown area Thursday night that will continue Friday and Saturday.
    Officials cleared the area around the BOK Center where Trump fans had been camping for days in the hopes of being among the first inside the Saturday night rally that is expected to draw far more than the 19,000-seat arena can hold.
    The move came after Tulsa Mayor G.T. Bynum declared a “civil emergency,” saying law enforcement informed him that “individuals from organized groups who have been involved in destructive and violent behavior in other states are planning to travel to the City of Tulsa for purposes of causing unrest in and around the rally,” according to his executive order.
    […]
    On Friday morning, the mood in downtown Tulsa was on edge, even as vendors continued to hawk T-shirts and faces masks. Despite the curfew, small clusters of people wearing MAGA hats and Trump T-shirts roamed the streets freely, taking photos.
    About four blocks from the BOK Arena, dozens of people clustered in soggy lawn chairs and huddled under umbrellas and tents in the morning rain after being moved from their spots in front of the arena Thursday night.
    […]
    Trump campaign manager Brad Parscale disputed the idea that the president’s supporters would cause unrest, telling Fox and Friends Friday morning, “You know, I’ve been here since day one, and I’ve found all Trump supporters to be really, you know, caring, loving people that care about this country.”
    “I think you see people coming in. They’re trying to disrupt. They’re trying to create scenes,” he added.

  39. “I think you see people coming in. They’re trying to disrupt. They’re trying to create scenes,”

    hey brad, whaddaya mean “think”?  you KNOW because you’ve encouraged/paid a bunch to bus in and cause havoc.

    that’s why you get the big bucks, guy.  the plan is as always distract distract distract. 

  40. SFB ain’t lying  The more people who vote the less likely he is to win   The majority of people just don’t like him

  42. Congrats Jamie!  Wow, great-grandchildren!!
     
    I saw Cuomo’s last briefing.  Sorry to see him stop.  He was the only consistent direction given in this wasteland called Tejas.

  43. RR, yes the majority of people don’t like him, but as Michael Moore said the other night, he keeps on keeping on, or something to that effect. He warned, be careful and don’t write him off.  I was sorry to hear him say that!  

  44. Could be the perfect result: Judge in hearing today hostile to DOJ prior restraint claim against Bolton book, but Bolton and his publisher could lose all their money for not waiting to get final pre-pub approval. 

  45. Am I naive?  Isn’t there still freedom of the press? If so, then a book can’t be banned. 

  47. So, i’m reading that 75 year-old Martin Gugino, the elderly protester that was brutally assaulted by a Buffalo cop, is now receiving death threats after Trump used Twitter to put a target on Gugino’s back by libeling him.
     
    As disgusted as i am by my President willfully and directly threatening and endangering the lives of good Americans, i’m even more disgusted by every politician that enables him, and even more disgusted than that at every person that voted for him.  
     
    November can’t come soon, enough.  Not One More Minute.

  48. We’ll probably never know how close we will have come to all mortal hell breaking out.  I believe the great institutions of our grand experimental government are going to hold the line.

  50. Tammy on Twitter 
    Just talked to my cuz who owns a barber unisex shop in Tulsa. 2 men from TX came in for trims. They hope to get on TV “busting up some lefty assholes.” She decided to close tomorrow. Many of her fellow hairdressers are POC & she’s worried for their safety. This is a setup.

  51. If Bolton’s book gets published, but he gets no money for it, that  would be a win-win!
    Never heard about Juneteenth until I moved to Texas. 
    Thinking I might not vote in the Dem run-off next month, especially as numbers with the sickness increase here.

  53. 1. Vermeer.
     
    2. Great kid pix, all.
     
    3. Whatever happened to, “They’re good people on both sides” ? 
     

  54. Sturge, they’re from TEXAS, eh?  Figures.  Exactly what’s predicted.  The deplorables will return to their deplorable places and spread the VIRUS to everyone! Criminal! 

  58. POC is people of color…as opposed to those lining up for the rally or who are there to pick a fight, who are POS

  62. I hope that fat boy announces that he is Jesus come back from the dead, and that everyone must worship him. Maybe he should add that he’s going enslave ‘the Mexicans’ and make them finish the wall. And, by the way, I’m going to marry Taylor Swift 

  64. Former White House chief of staff Mick Mulvaney critiqued President Trump’s hiring decisions, saying the president did not choose the right people. – WaPo
     
    Funny you should say that mick.

  65. Dire Mr trump,
     
    If you want something to be totally fucked up, you’ve gotta do it yourself.

  67. Florida gov blames coronavirus rise on ‘overwhelmingly Hispanic’ workers

    “Some of these guys go to work in a school bus, and they are all just packed there like sardines, going across Palm Beach County or some of these other places, and there’s all these opportunities to have transmission,” DeSantis said during a press conference in Tallahassee.

    Yes, this punk Governor said that about frontline workers that do the worst jobs for us all. Damn these Florida voters. They fucked us all! 

  68. Sturg and Jamie
    Sweet beautiful kids!
    Bink
    “November can’t come soon, enough.  Not One More Minute.”
    Exactly I’m counting the days (137). I want them all to suffer the humiliation of defeat! 
     

  70. The Secret Service told Tulsa a curfew wasn’t necessary.  That seems odd.  Normally, they close down everything and want to sweep the area before a presidential visit, don’t they?

  71. A $1.1m hospital bill after surviving the coronavirus? That's America for you
     
    After he nearly died from Covid-19, Michael Flor probably thought he couldn’t be shocked by much else. He had survived a battle with a deadly virus that had killed more than 100,000 people across America.

    But Flor, a 70-year-old from Seattle, was hit with an incomprehensible hospital bill for his stay: $1.1m, the Seattle Times reported.
    The bill included $9,736 per day for the intensive care room, nearly $409,000 for its transformation into a sterile room for 42 days, $82,000 for the use of a ventilator for 29 days, and nearly $100,000 for two days when he appeared to be on his deathbed.
    Luckily for Flor, Medicare will pick up the bill. For other Americans, medical debt could follow them for the rest of their lives.

  72. Watching Joy and showing the mAgats in Tulsa. Definitely an argument to thin the herd. 
    XR, Taylor Swift?  In your dreams. Btw what does Sweetie have to say about those plans?

  73. Send her this song, xrep (“Wish I knew You When I Was Younger” extended live version, really good post-bluesy chill rock):
     

    (guy making that goofy face has a really good voice)

  75. I thought it would be better to get my first haircut since December next month, but with the way numbers are going up here, I probably should’ve done it right after they re-opened.  

  76. in Tulsa. 2 men from TX came in for trims. They hope to get on TV “busting up some lefty assholes.”

    yep. gonna be a bad time in tulsa tonight * tomorrow.

     

    stray observations before bedtime:

    1. funny that the guy on news tonight who complained about his rights taken away if made to wear a mask doesn’t have a problem about being required by the gub’mint to wear britches.   cover one asshole might as well cover the other. 

    2.  anyone notice that media today assumed amy when she said joe should pick a “woman of color”, only meant a black person.    overlooking automatically those 2 western ladies of native American and Hispanic heritage.

  77. Like those guys Bink. I love the Guild guitar- very reminiscent of LP’s latest acquisition- a 1981 ES-335 that is wonderfully aged. 

  79. Mass extinction at Voice of America, as bannon’s homophobic pal from bratbite, mike pack, fires all dep’t heads and board members. 
     
    “Chairman xi, if you campaign for Mr trump, you’ll get nothing but good press outa the VOA.”
    “Chairman putin, if you campaign for Mr trump, you’ll get nothing but good press outa the VOA.”
    “Ayatollah khamenei, if you campaign for Mr trump, you’ll get nothing but good press outa the VOA.”
    Mr Macron, if you campaign for Mr trump, you’ll get nothing but good press outa the VOA.”
    Pope Francis, if you campaign for Mr trump, you’ll get nothing but good press outa the VOA.”
    Ms Merkel, if you campaign for Mr trump, you’ll get nothing but good press outa the VOA.”

  80. No, I haven’t overdone it. Mr pack could add corporations to the target list. VoA could begin to promote huawei, if huawei were to help trump.
     
    I am sure that there is no bottom to the venality, depravity and corruption in trump world.

  81. First thought, about the rednecks going to Tulsa to kick lefties asses.  If lefties are stupid enough to show up, they get what they deserve.  I’ve been over on redneck land the last couple of days. Me and my mask have been right lonely. My first trip to Redneck land was to buy a new mower to mow all the vacant lots in the neighborhood. MY old cheap one wore out. I bought a Bad Boy.  Built down in Arkansas built buy a bunch of rednecks that will work as cheap as Mexicans. I had to spend an extra $300 to pump foam into the tires so I can run over beer bottles with out getting a flat.  You would think that something built by Arkansas rednecks and called Bad Boy that running over beer bottles would be a standard feature.  But No.
    Jack

  82. Having a back and forth on twitter with my council critter. Her son is very inquisitive, he likes history(as do I)  and  one of the things he was curious about as a young black boy, was cowboys. so I sent this link from the Smithsonian as always I read it an it occurred to me and I included this in my reply. “the twentieth century erased so much history, the image of the cowboy being one ”
    It is one of those things we don’t think about. But of course there were black cowboys, cowboy culture came up out of Texas. 
    So when an asshole talks about taking down a statue as erasing history, hell they have been at it for over 100 years.
    Jack
     

  86. It’s fucking disgusting that a good man like Jack has to be uncomfortable socially for just trying to protect himself and his community, and it is trump’s fault, directly, for creating that cultural-climate.  Same goes for BiD, and me, and you, too.
     
    Not One Minute More. 

  87. My President is trying to get you people killed and it pisses me off because i like you people.  
     
    Sorry.

  88. Bink, I told somebody the other day, hell yeah I’m wearing a mask. My goal is still to be shot by a 25 year old jealous husband. Ain’t gonna die with no fucking corona virus. 
    lol,
    In old folks redneck land , aka Sams Club probably  90% wore masks and it was always the men who didn’t. Their wives did. Kinda funny
    Jack

  89. But yeah, I’m with you.
    This should not be a political thing and Trump is an asshole for pushing it.
    But then again what are we for being such cowards that we let it affect our behavior.
    Just sayin
    Jack

  90. Compartmentalize your anger.  Feel it, understand it, use it, but make sure you put it away for a while, every day, and experience joy in the things that make life worth living, and share that stuff, too.
     
    One of those things, for me, is music.  That’s why i share it with you.  
     
    Ok ✌️

  91. Hey, Jack, you’re crushing it.  Illegitimi non carborundum💪❤️🇺🇸
     
    Same goes for you, too.  You’re crushing it.  Illegitimi non carborundum💪❤️🇺🇸

  96. yes plz

    you’re blowing out a neighborhood half a continental away fyi

    Thanks, good Sir. Am plum-tuckered 😴✌️🇺🇸

  98. When I saw how aggressively US Attorney Geoffrey Berman’s office was pursuing interview with Prince Andrew about Epstein pimping underage girls to him I thought Trump also must be in their sights

  99. Get it, CC.  Use all your powers.  This is your moment.  
     
    G,nite for realz😴❤️🇺🇸

  100. My dad was a truck driver and back in the day I had a number of friends who were too. If they say they never used speed they are lying. My Dad was proud that he never did bennies but he had a prescription for diet pills. They made sure he made it home for the weekend. But then again he and   his friends all had “nerve problems” as they got older.
     

  101. Ok, I have ta admit, I’ve been sipping on some of preacher Craig’s finest. I’m about through for the evening 
    But just for our president and his asshole rally
    Living on Tulsa time.

  102. Some blues with Eric Clapton and Jeff Beck
    All I can say enjoy and good night
    Jack

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