I ain’t gonna lie. I’m a Black person—been a Black person for 74 years—and I never heard of Juneteenth until two years ago. Juneteenth celebrates June 19, 1865 when Gen. Gordon Granger informed Texas slaves they were free for almost two and a half years after the Emancipation Proclamation. (Now, ain’t that some evil shit? President Lincoln declared all the slaves in America emancipated, but Texas refused to comply. It has been noted that Texas had some Africans enslaved for more than five years or more after the Emancipation Proclamation. Good grief!)
Immediately recognizing the significance of Juneteenth, I tried to figure out a simplistic way to explain it to my grandchildren should I ever be asked:
“Well, Grandbabies, Juneteenth is Black folks Fourth of July—the day the last of our people found out what the White folks had been keeping from us!”
I have a mentor who I met when I was 16 years old—the year the Civil Rights Act of 1964 passed. She is African-American, and as soon as the bill passed, we put on our finest Sunday-go-to-meetin’ clothes with freshly pressed hair, polished shoes, and white gloves, and each month she took me to many of the places Black folks had never been allowed to frequent in our town: certain restaurants, theaters, parks, museums. Each time she would say, “Today, we are going to visit one of the many places White folks have been keepin’ from us.” When I look back on her courage and foresight, I am blown away. People didn’t always welcome us with open arms or with grace, but we forged ahead anyway and step-by-step I learned that just because certain White folks had ignored the memo in 1964 that Black folks were free to go wherever we pleased, it didn’t mean we had to obey them. White folks had always had privileges—Black folks now had rights to those same privileges.
As I meditated on the meaning of Juneteenth these past couple of years, I realized something significant: Juneteenth symbolizes both joy and horror. The joy of Black folks being told that we were “free at last,”—free from the sin of an inhumane bondage from Hell. But also, the celebration of Juneteenth is the recognition of the horror that the Proclamation and the revelation of Black freedom would not be settled law but would be fought ad infinitum by a great number of White folks who refused to hear the truth then and even to this day. (Yeah! We’re no longer slaves; Yikes! We can never rest on our laurels—we must fight to gain and maintain our rights as human beings until the end of days.)
I’d tell my grandkids that Juneteenth means they are created in God’s image and can freely venture into places and spaces “the White folks have been keeping from us,” but they should know that they will have to continuously fight for their right to do so (from the voting booth to the marketplace), as I did just the other day when I boarded a plane to claim my first-class seat (bought and paid for by my hard-earned money). I had to confront a White man who hadn’t gotten the memo that I deserved the privilege of the seat next to him which he was trying to co-opt. He thought I belonged in the “back of the bus,” but I knew otherwise (“Did you pay for this seat?” challenged the racist White Dude). As a child of God, I stood firmly, I spoke boldly, and I won! My racist seat-mate crawled into his corner and fell asleep for the entire trip while I sipped my champagne with delight and snuggled into my first-class accommodations and mediated on what Juneteenth means to me.
Eleanor Tomczyk is an author and a satirist who is an award-winning voice-over performer. In 2011, she created the blog, “How the Hell Did I End Up Here” which features mostly satirical posts that have thousands of readers around the world—although she was recently banned in Pakistan (for real!). Tomczyk’s three books were featured in a recent book festival: “Monsters’ Throwdown,” “Fleeing Oz,” and “The Fetus Chronicles—Podcasts to my Miseducated Self.” Currently in her 70s and living life like it is freakin’ golden, she is a consummate storyteller and much sought-after motivational speaker. If you don’t believe me, just ask her!
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how the hell did i end up here? 