Some people still aren’t getting the memo about what true freedom looks like
“Joy and gladness exhausted all forms of expression, from shouts of praise to sobs and tears.” So Frederick Douglass described the scene in Boston’s Faneuil Hall on the evening of January 1st, 1863, when a telegraph from Washington, D.C., finally confirmed that President Lincoln had signed the Emancipation Proclamation that day.
Enslaved people in Texas would wait another 2 1/2 years to receive the news, but when it finally came on Juneteenth, June 19, 1865, the limits of human expression were tested once again. The long-awaited and prayed-for day of Jubilee had finally come. For the first time in American history, African Americans could stand in public and sing songs of freedom. But their joy-filled songs were also tinged with tears of sadness for all who had been lost, all that they had suffered, and all who continued to resist the good news of liberty.
One hundred and fifty-seven years later, the nation pauses to remember the celebration of freedom so long denied and so tirelessly sought. But we cannot recall the joy and tears of Juneteenth without honoring the dedication to Reconstruction that accompanied them. The point of Juneteenth is that, even when the president of the United States proclaimed freedom, some people didn’t get the memo. The systems of racism were determined to hold onto power as long as possible. When we see efforts today to overturn democratic elections, suppress votes, block living wages, refuse just immigration and gun reform, and perpetuate mass incarceration, it’s clear that some people still haven’t received the memo. In the face of their obstinance, we must learn from those who worked following Juneteenth to determine what it would look like for the promise of freedom to be made real for them.
Just five months after the Civil War ended, more than 100 formerly enslaved people gathered for the first time at the African Methodist Episcopal Church in Raleigh to name their political priorities as United States citizens. They insisted on the right to testify in court, sit on juries, and, above all, to vote. Once the 15th Amendment guaranteed voting rights to them and other formerly enslaved people, Black men across the South participated in the political process, often forming fusion coalitions with poor white farmers and electing representatives who raised taxes on plantation owners to guarantee public education for all people. Freedom didn’t simply mean leaving the violence and bondage of slavery behind. It meant Reconstructing the political economy of the South so that all people could thrive.
As we commemorate Juneteenth in America today, the violence of a political economy that doesn’t serve most of us is still a reality. Some 140 million Americans are poor or low-income, and as corporations have posted record profits during the pandemic, inflation means those who were struggling to survive before have even less to make ends meet. Black, Brown and Native people are disproportionately impacted by any measure. But in raw numbers, there are still more white people suffering from low wages, lack of access to healthcare, crippling debt and homelessness.
Like our fore parents who decided to come together in Freedmen’s Assemblies after Juneteenth, Americans of every race, faith, and region chose to celebrate this Juneteenth weekend by gathering in Washington, D.C., for the Mass Poor People’s and Low-Wage Workers’ Assembly and Moral March on Washington and to the Polls. We listened to the pain of people who have been promised “life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness,” but are experiencing poverty in the richest nation in the history of the world. We created a platform on Pennsylvania Avenue for the nation to hear their cries. But we also insisted that it doesn’t have to be this way. We know that all Americans can thrive when we have living wages, union rights, affordable housing, access to healthcare and education, voting rights protections, and the guarantee of equal protection. And we know that we have the resources within our gross domestic product to guarantee all of these things and more. What we haven’t had is a mass movement to demand that both political parties in America take poor people seriously.
Those who heard the good news of the Emancipation Proclamation in 1863 didn’t get to experience their freedom immediately. It took more than two years for the news to get to Texas, and for the guarantee of citizenship to become the 13th Amendment. Many who celebrated the first Juneteenth worked and organized the rest of their lives to make its promise a reality. But they knew in their assemblies what this weekend’s meeting in D.C. declared: We who believe in freedom cannot simply celebrate it; we must challenge its adversaries and fight for its implementation until all of God’s children experience how it feels to be free.
This story was originally published June 19, 2022 at 5:00 AM.