JUNETEENTH
When I went through security at the Denver airport I discovered that I had in my pocket the second key to our cabin at Valhalla Resort in Estes Park. Today I went down to the Swannanoa post office to mail the key back. I saw people walking out of the post office so knew the post office was open. But inside the counter was shuttered. I was confused, it wasn’t Memorial Day, why would they be closed in the middle of the week? I couldn’t figure it out until I went outside and looked at the listing of national holidays. Today is Juneteenth, June 19th. I didn’t know it was a national holiday as I bet most people didn‘t know.
But my ignorance about Juneteenth immediately began to bother me. I don’t know, or care, about Juneteenth because I am white and am unconcerned with the celebration of freedom of Africans sold as slaves. June 19 is the day that enslaved Africans in Galveston, Texas were told that they were free. It happened two years after Lincoln’s emancipation proclamation. Blacks have celebrated the day all along but only last year did it become a national holiday.
I wonder how I would feel if I were descended from enslaved Africans. Would I feel the relief and joy of my ancestors when they realized they were free? Or would Juneteenth be a reminder that freedom was not then really freedom because very soon the Jim Crow era of segregation and second class citizenship without the ability to vote and with inferior schools and the weight of oppression enforced by the fear of lynching would continue for another 100 more years. If my ancestors had been enslaved and beaten down for another hundred years and still were blocked by prejudice today, I think this would be for me a bittersweet holiday.
BILLYBABA’S WANDERING 