Leftist liberal activists and black voters will never recognize the contributions of Republicans to this day or their emancipationÂ
It seems Republicans and Democrats, liberals and conservatives, are trying to join hands over the bipartisan approval in Congress over adoption of a new federal holiday, Juneteenth (essentially, June 19 of each year). It’s a day off for federal workers, but each state and business will decide for themselves.
But there’s a lot of misinformation about what Juneteenth is. I have seen statements in the media and social media like “the day slaves won their freedom†to “the day they learned of the Emancipation Proclamation in Texas.â€
“Juneteenth’s commemoration is on the anniversary date of the June 19, 1865, announcement of General Order No. 3 by Union Army general Gordon Granger, proclaiming and enforcing freedom of enslaved people in Texas, which was the last state of the Confederacy with institutional slavery.
President Abraham Lincoln‘s Emancipation Proclamation of 1862 had officially outlawed slavery in Texas and in all of the other states of the original Confederacy. Enforcement of the Proclamation generally relied upon the advance of Union troops. Texas, as the most remote state of the former Confederacy, had seen an expansion of slavery and had a low presence of Union troops as the American Civil War ended; thus, enforcement there had been slow and inconsistent prior to Granger’s announcement.
…Emancipation came at different times to various places in the Southern United States. Celebrations of emancipation, often called Jubilees (recalling the biblical Jubilee in which slaves were freed) occurred on September 22, July 4, August 1, April 6, and November 1, among other dates. In Texas, emancipation came late: enforced in Texas on June 19, 1865, as the southern rebellion collapsed, emancipation became a well-known cause of celebration.
Although this event has come to be celebrated as the end of slavery, emancipation for the remaining enslaved in two Union border states (Delaware and Kentucky), would not come until several months later, on December 18, 1865, when ratification of the Thirteenth Amendment was announced.â€
For freed blacks, Juneteenth, not the date of the 13th amendment or Emancipation Proclamation, became the day to celebrate freedom, often with picnics and fireworks. Texas’ governor issued a proclamation in 1938 honoring Juneteenth “and do urge all members of the Negro race in Texas to observe the day in a manner appropriate to its importance to them.†It became an official state holiday in 1980 and states including Virginia made it state holidays within the last two years.
All but 14 Republicans in Congress supported the bill Biden signed last Thursday, and that was duly noted by the anti-Republican media.
However, Republican Party, not the Democrats were principally responsible for abolishing slavery. The GOP was founded in 1854 by opponents of the Kansas–Nebraska Act, which allowed for the potential expansion of slavery into the western territories.
Until the New Deal era, most blacks (who could vote) voted for “The Party of Lincoln.†Republican votes in Congress were critical in passing civil rights and voting rights legislation in the 1960s since Southern Democrats in Congress opposed, Ronald Reagan, a Republican signed the law creating the Martin Luther King Holiday. Trump’s economy, prior to COVID, led to the lowest unemployment rate among blacks, Latinos and women since 1969.
But today’s black activists and politicians care nothing about Republican contributions, including their support for Juneteenth.  They are so in bed with the Democratic Party as the Democrats are a party of grievance groups and support government handouts as a means of controlling the populace. Conservative writer Dinesh D’Souza has equated the slums and public housing projects with the plantations of old.
The black leaders and Black Lives Matter (BLM) faction want to shove critical race theory “equity and inclusion†training down our throats and make whites in particular perpetually guilty and liable for past injustices to blacks.
My guess is that given the racial divide caused by Barack Obama, Al Sharpton and today’s BLM activists, Juneteenth is going to be a holiday only for the woke, and Republicans if they choose to celebrate will be put at the kiddie table, like at Thanksgiving. Not one Republican member of congress was behind President Biden when he signed the Juneteenth holiday bill.
When I lived in Leesburg, and served 10 years there in elected office, I was a member of the Loudoun NAACP and attended their annual “Freedom Dinner†and marched with my kids in the MLK Day Parades. I also helped the NAACP with some publicity for their efforts.
Indeed, Republicans attended these events to just show the flag, but in recent years were not very welcomed. The NAACP of Loudoun was taken over by two rabid bigots, Phillip Thompson and Michelle Thomas, who looked at any conservative as a white supremacist or Klansman without the robes.
By all means, we should celebrate this new holiday, and not denigrate it. However, Republicans should expect no thanks or credit from the Leftist so-called “leaders†of America’s black community for the time being.
And, no holiday, government handout, CRT-classes or tearing down statues of Confederates or renaming buildings and schools is going to any good for the black underclass in America’s cities and rural areas, who continue to vote in their Democrat politician slave masters over and over again.
21 comments
Mark my words, the Socialists will push for the “Juneteenth National Independence Day†to replace the 4th of July. The “National Independence Day†wording was no mistake. This is a Trojan Horse, and one more step in the displacement of the real America. Juneteenth is a placeholder for things to come.
Chew on this, Ken
http://liberalsoutherner.com/2021/06/you-were-saying/
IT IS NO ACCIDENT THAT:
— you did not learn that James Meredith (who integrated the Univ of Mississippi in 1962), and, a member of the University’s Board of Trustees who refused to admit Meredith shared the same white great-grandfather — J. A P. Campbell, 1830 – 1917.
So, this is where WTF gets talking points — a facebook meme? I thought liberals were about facts and reason.
Obviously, you’re all about hype, spin and b.s.
https://www.facebook.com/TheOther98/photos/a.115969958413991/6586570224687233/
Can you refute a single point?
Of course you can’t.
You clearly don’t understand that by spending time tracking down my comments you are reinforcing everything I say.
First they ignore me.
Then they attack me.
Then I win.
I just won.
Win? You must really have no life if your only thrill is getting the “last word” against a conservative. BTW, Students most certainly learn these things in school, but that’s never enough for liberals like you who want to brainwash every white student, parent and employer in the nation to believe THEY alone are the fault of black America’s ills. Maybe you should read something about these “equity” courses and how students are pressured to watch videos and answer loaded questions against their will vs. relying on liberal talking points you see in memes on Facebook
“Students most certainly learn these things in school…â€
Simply untrue, Ken. Another person they don’t learn about is Paul Jennings and what his role was in the founding of our country. That is no accident as well…
Do you have kids in the schools? Have you looked at the curriculum or are you just spouting Lefist anti-racist talking points??
wow. i definitely got your goats up this morning! I must have done a good job on this column!
Not sure that’s how it works, Ken… but you keep telling yourself that….
We need more holidays to prevent government from continuing to intrude in citizen lives. I suggest at last 364 of them.???
We need more holidays to prevent government from continuing to intrude in citizen lives. I suggest at last 364 of them.??????
IT IS NO ACCIDENT THAT —
— you learned about Helen Keller but not W. E. B. DuBois.
— your history classes taught the Civil War based on Edward Pollard’s “The Lost Cause” and D.W. Griffiths’ movie “The Birth of a Nation” (originally titled “The Clansmen”), but you never heard of W. E. B. DuBois’ “Black Reconstruction” and Foner’s “Reconstruction.”
— you learned about Robert Frost but not Langston Hughes.
— you learned about Paul Revere but not Fannie Lou Hamer.
— you stand for “The Star-Spangled Banner” but don’t know why African-Americans stand for “Lift Every Voice and Sing.”
— you learned that George Washington’s teeth were made of wood but not that they were made from the teeth of slaves.
— you learned about the New Deal but not about red-lining.
— you learned about black ghettos but not about Black Wall Street.
— you learned about Tommy Smith’s fist in the air in 1968 but not that he was sent back to the States the next day and stripped of his medals.
— you learned about “black crime” but never heard the term “white crime”.
— you learned that “States’ Rights” was the cause of the Civil War but not that “slavery” is used 80 times in the Articles of Secession and is featured in the leading paragraphs of the CSA Constitution.
— you learned about the Watts and LA riots but not about Tulsa and Wilmington.
— you fell for “The Bell Curve” but now you denounce the arcane, little-known “critical race theory”.
It is also no accident that you ignore the tribal roots of African slavery or the current practices of slavery in the Muslim world.
Let’s see if I understand this: Because of “the tribal roots of African slavery” and “current practices of slavery in the Muslim world,” we should abolish the 13th Amendment and re-institute slavery in the US. Does that about cover it?
You are engaging in the typical rightwing response — what about? look over there — squirrel!!!
That is essentially what you propose with your totalitarian outlook. Ignore history and even current events to advocate for a power grab.
Doc, You can’t hide behind that name any more than you could hide behind your last one. Your ignorance will always rat you out…
It might behoove you to read up on the Lily-white movement particularly in Virginia and the Republican Convention of 1922 in Luray.
Do not expect Reid or any of the other “authors” or commenters on TBE to vary from the position stated by Reid in this misleading article.
And what is that position? That Democrats are the party of slavery. Period.
You see, Eric, in the Republican mind, history stopped somewhere around the 1880’s when Southern Democrats swung the Hayes-Tilden election to Hayes in exchange for ending Reconstruction — withdrawing Federal troops from the South and ending the Freedmen’s Bureau, thereby paving the way for the Southern “Redeemer” state and local government, controlled damn near 100% by Democrats who retaliated against the Party of Lincoln for freeing the slaves, given the vote to blacks, and generally wrecking our “way of life,” leading to the solidly-Democratic South that lasted until Truman de-segregated the armed forces, which led to Strom Thurmond’s Dixiecrats then to Nixon’s Southern Strategy and Reagan’s Neshoba County Fair speech. All of which led the parties to flip with Republicans now being the party of the Klan, Jim Crow, black voter suppression.
Reid and the rest of the TBE crowd are stuck in that mindset. They refuse to recognize that current Republican legislation in over 30 states is aimed at suppressing black and other minority voters just as completely were the Jim Crow laws, Black Codes, and Southern Redeemer Constitutions of 1880-1906.
Reid’s article is so filled with misleading claims that to refute them all would require a whole separate blog . . . none of which these Foxophiles and Trumpsters would pay attention to.
Yes, it is truly ironic how the Unionist Republicans want to protect the statues of the Confederate generals they died to overthrow and the Democrats want to destroy the monuments honoring their supposed heroes… real head scratcher that!!
Refusing to learn from history is why you so desperately want to erase it.