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Excellent piece from dagblog:

On June 19 (“Juneteenth”), 1865, Union general Gordon Granger arrived in Galveston and issued General Order Number 3, which read in part, “The people of Texas are informed that, in accordance with a proclamation from the Executive of the United States, all slaves are free. This involves an absolute equality of personal rights and rights of property between former masters and slaves, and the connection heretofore existing between them becomes that between employer and hired labor.” The tidings of freedom reached the approximately 250,000 slaves in Texas gradually as individual plantation owners informed their bondsmen over the months following the end of the war. The news elicited an array of personal celebrations, some of which have been described in The Slave Narratives of Texas (1974). The first broader celebrations of Juneteenth were used as political rallies and to teach freed slaves about their voting rights. Within a short time, however, Juneteenth was marked by festivities throughout the state, some of which were organized by official Juneteenth committees. Slaveholders in Texas had been able to keep the news of Emancipation from their slaves until 1865. There was a period during the Civil Rights era of the 1960s when the celebrations fell out of favor.

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While celebrating the uplifting stories, we must remember that some freed slaves fell victim to another form of slavery that involved jailing black men for merely being unemployed. The jailed men could be “sold” to local farmers, lumber camps and coal mines to pay off their “fines”. Douglas Blackmon detailed the story in Slavery By Another Name (2010). The book was the basis for a PBS documentary earlier this year. Law enforcement as a method of intimidation continues to this day as drug laws are used to incarcerate black men for nonviolent drug crimes. Michelle Alexander documents the history in The New Jim Crow (2010). Law enforcement officials are not viewed as “Officer Friendly” by many in the black community.

Blackmon mentions the impact that the freed slaves had on the creation of public schools and hospitals. The impact of the neglect the general public had on health care issues in the black community is described in a new book Sick From Freedom (2012). The initial result of the ex-slave health crisis care was the creation of “Separate but Equal” hospitals. The health care struggle continues today with many illnesses negatively impacting the black community more than whites.

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