Happy Juneteenth to those who celebrate. 

I have to specify “to those who celebrate,” because it’s still a relatively new holiday. Maybe it shouldn’t be, what with the original Juneteenth happening over 150 years ago.

And some people, certainly, have been celebrating Juneteenth for years. Decades. A century or more.

For the rest of us, it kinda came out of nowhere. Even here in California, where most people are quick to throw out systemic racism as the explanation for everything from climate change to Caitlin Clark, most people’s reaction on Juneteenth is, “Oh wait, we’re celebrating this now?”

We didn’t really get a chance to discuss it. In fact, if we delve a little deeper about Juneteenth, I don’t think it’s a holiday that most of the white progressives, who are right now preparing authentic vegan slave food for their Instagram feeds, would have jumped on board with.

Some throat clearing to begin with. We absolutely ought to celebrate the end of slavery. I like those who refer to it as America’s Second Independence Day. I’d take five holidays devoted to ideals of equality and freedom over, say, Easter or Thanksgiving. The only thing worse than a religion saying sex is bad but celebrating rabbits and eggs in Spring is when we are forced to pretend turkey tastes good. I’d be fine if we just made it a national gravy day, but lets put that stuff on biscuits instead of poultry.

My skepticism about Juneteenth has nothing to do with celebrating the end of slavery. It has everything to do with celebrating Texas.

This might take a little history lesson.

The Civil War ended in late May, 1865. However, because not everybody was following Robert E. Lee’s TikTok account, the fighting went on for some time after that. Texas was one of the holdouts, and on June 19, a Union general pushed into Galveston, which more or less wrapped up the fighting. He issued an order informing or reminding the Texans that the slaves were free.  Sort of.

Let’s go back a few years and start with the Emancipation Proclamation. Many people errantly believe Juneteenth is about the Emancipation Proclamation. They also errantly believe the Emancipation was passed in order to free slaves. It wasn’t. It was about ending the Civil War.

In fact, if you read the language of the Emancipation Proclamation, which was proclaimed (not enacted) in September, 1862, it only frees slaves in states still “in rebellion” on January 1, 1863. In other words, it was a carrot to the Confederate States that if they came back to the Union in the next four months, they could keep their slaves. Just like the four states in the Union, which kept their slaves after the Emancipation Proclamation. Good ol’ Honest Abe’s primary goal was to be the president who lost half the country. Whether slaves were freed or not was an afterthought.

No, this isn’t one of those “Lost Cause” Civil War apologies. All you dumbshits with your Confederate flags who claim that the Confederacy wasn’t about slavery are disingenuous and you know it. It was about states’ rights? Federalism? Way of life? Okay, I’ll bite. WHICH “state’s right” was on the verge of being taken away? WHAT was the key component to the “Way of Life” they were trying to preserve? If “owning slaves” wasn’t one of your top two answers to either of those questions, you’re trying too hard.

Oh, and we can debate whether the Confederate flag is racist. Technically, the U.S. flag flew over plantations much longer, summed up excellently by Denzel Washington in Glory. But whether or not the Confederate flag is racist, it is undeniably about treason. Especially when you consider that the Confederate flag they all fly was not the government’s flag, but the battle flag. The Confederate government, the entity passing laws ensuring states rights, was red, white, and blue. The orange one with the cross of stars in the middle was only used on the battlefield. Only used when shooting at the American army. Which is treason.

But while the Emancipation Proclamation didn’t actually free any slaves when it went into effect, it did eventually apply to most of the slaves. Since none of the states took Abe up on his whole “Keep Your Slaves” Proclamation, the army had the power to free their slaves if and when they conquered each state. As punishment for the rebellion, not because Abe believed in any grandiose ideas of self-determination. 

This executive action was probably unconstitutional. Giving the army the power to take people that the Constitution technically still considered property. I mean, it isn’t as far of a reach as, say, the agency whose job is studying infectious disease proclaiming that homeowners aren’t allowed to collect rent from residents, but the Supreme Court might’ve been brought into the dispute. Fortunately for Abe, the states affected by his action were ignoring the Supreme Court at the time.

Ergo, the Emancipation Proclamation didn’t immediately free any slaves. So it’s probably not a good idea to use it as our manumission holiday. And we don’t. It was signed on September 22 and went into effect on January 1. January 1 is, obviously, already a college football holiday, and even though some of those athletes now make NIL deals, a day when unpaid men are breaking their bodies so some fancy bigwig university presidents can pocket millions probably isn’t the best day to celebrate the end of slavery. 

September 22 is kinda close to September 17, which is Constitution Day. Not that we really celebrate the Constitution. Maybe they could have been combined, reflecting that whole “worth of the individual” thing. If it weren’t for that persnickety detail about the Emancipation Proclamation being unconstitutional. 

Besides, labor unions already put a “People should get paid for work” holiday in September.

Personally, I’d like to use the thirteenth amendment as our end of slavery holiday, considering it a) did it the proper way, and b) affected the entire country all at once. After all, Kentucky and Delaware were still allowed to have slaves after the Civil War was over. Like I said, Abe was perfectly fine letting states keep their slaves as long as they played on his team. 

Unfortunately, the thirteenth amendment was implemented in mid-December, when we’re all busy with Santa parades and shopping. Unless we’re following my earlier idea of shit-canning Thanksgiving, we can’t really be adding any major holidays during that time of the year. That’s probably why we don’t celebrate the twenty-first amendment on December 5, which is the one holiday I truly think we need. We have a Mexican drinking day and an Irish drinking day. Why not an American one? 

Fun little factoid: the state that pushed the twenty-first amendment past the threshold? Utah. They signed off on us having our booze, and ever since then have decided that 3% is quite enough ABV, thank you very much.

So if the Emancipation Proclamation happened in September and went into effect in January, and if slavery was finally outlawed in December, what the heck are we celebrating in June?

It wasn’t the first slave being freed. It wasn’t the last slave being freed. 

It was some Texan slaves being freed. 

On June 19, 1865 a general in the Union Army occupying Texas issued an order that was basically, “Hey, did y’all not hear that y’all don’t get no slaves no more?”

You might think he didn’t use the word “y’all” because he was a northern general. I assume he did, because the Texans seemed to have understood him. 

And, lest we again trick ourselves into thinking this was some grand gesture toward racial harmony, they added a second paragraph to the Juneteenth Proclamation specifically for the slaves, who I’m sure could totally read. It told them that they should stay working where they were already working, they should just get paid for it. They should NOT, under any circumstances, come to the army camps or any other government offices looking for, I don’t know, freedom. 

And I’m sure those Texan slaves (who, again, had to be literate because the Proclamation, as far as we know, was not delivered orally) were perfectly fine walking up to the guy who thought he owned them yesterday in order to negotiate a wage. As sure as I am that those plantation owners were totally willing participants in the exchange. After all, a century and a half later, his descendants were going to need a holiday in mid-June.

Some of the other misconceptions about Juneteenth are that it was the first time any of the slaves had heard about the Emancipation Proclamation. Nope. Somehow, even before social media, scuttlebutt spread. I’ve heard some suggest that these were either the first slaves freed or the last slaves freed. The first one is absolutely a no, considering that slaves had been continuously freed as the Union swept across the Confederacy.

It’s also highly unlikely they weren’t the last slaves freed, either. Again, Kentucky and Delaware, by virtue of not joining the Confederacy, were allowed to keep their slaves until the thirteenth amendment was ratified. By most accounts, a lot of those slaves were freed long in advance of the official date, but knowing the uber-wealthy, I’ve got to believe that one or two holdouts considered their slaves to be personal property up until the moment the government told them they couldn’t anymore.

So if it wasn’t the first or last slaves freed, what is it a celebration of? If anything, it’s a celebration of the Union conquering the last enclave of holdouts. It’s a celebration of some slaves being, maybe kinda, freed, so long as they were willing to take advantage of it.

So why are we celebrating it? Because it happened in Texas. After New York and California, our country’s third obsession is Texas. Sorry, Florida. 

During the BLM protests in 2020, a lot of discussions occurred about which topics were and were not covered in U.S. history. Most of those conversations were annoying because they were topics that are absolutely covered in U.S. history. Just because the yahoos in the media weren’t paying attention when their teachers taught about Emmett Till and the Freedom Riders and Selma doesn’t mean that history was being whitewashed.

The one that stumped me was the Tulsa race riots. Because, yeah, that’s never really been a major topic. Not just in high schools, but in colleges. But I don’t think the culprit is us not wanting people to know that Black middle classers often faced the harshest retributions. That’s fifty percent of the U.S. History curriculum from 1890 to 1960. I think what it comes down to is… it’s Tulsa. I don’t think Oklahoma appears anywhere in any U.S. history curriculum between the Homestead Act and, I don’t know, Timothy McVeigh?

But Texas shows up often. Because they matter. And if you aren’t sure if Texas matters, just ask a Texan. They’ll tell you.

But should liberals in California and New York be celebrating the fact that Texas dragged its feet on ending slavery? Should they be playing along with “Everything’s bigger in Texas”? 

Not just Texas. I’m not sure we should let any member of the Confederacy determine when and how we celebrate the end of slavery in the country.

I’m all ears for a better option.