“We don’t celebrate the 4th,” my Fulani Princess told the White couple, sparking a look of shock and confusion.
I don’t know if the couple’s reaction was rooted in disbelief or bewilderment.
Or maybe it was rooted in the fact that it came from an eight-year-old African American child.
Before my granddaughter could elaborate, I quickly interceded, asking if the couple had ever read Frederick Douglass’s speech about the 4th?
It was actually a rhetorical question, redirecting their attention from my pre-teen to me.
The couple walked through the neighborhood and stopped to say ‘hello’ when my granddaughter drove up on her bike.
She politely said hello to the couple and asked if she could pat their dog.
After I explained she was in Milwaukee for the early part of the summer, the man asked if she would be here long enough to celebrate Independence Day?
They obviously didn’t expect the response they received.
My granddaughter spent a great deal of her young life in our household and obviously had undergone our cultural indoctrination.
She was taught that contrary to what she may be introduced to in government schools, our ancestors invented the sciences, established great kingdoms, and had persevered through the worst form of slavery known to mankind.
Our Fula princess has been brought up to believe that she is unique–as are all Africans–because we are Nyame’s (God’s) firstborn, created in His/Her image and planted in the garden of Africa.
Princess is not my granddaughter’s name, but a title, I’ve told her repeatedly, as she is not only from the Fula and Mende tribes of West African but a descendent of Rameses III, the pharaoh of Kemet.
Her ancestors were stolen from the Motherland, endured the Middle Passages as three to four million of their brethren’s bodies line the Atlanta Ocean.
Those who survived the Middle Passage were cast into inhuman chattel slavery and forced to build America with the sweat of their brows and the blood from their veins (or their backs from the whip marks). And if they weren’t whipped into submission, they were tortured, raped, and lynched by the thousands post-slavery for believing they were equal.
They were irrelevant creatures without a culture, religion, or language.
And since chattel was considered soul-less, and only ‘part human’ (three-fifths to be exact, as specified by the Constitution), we are told to celebrate on the 4th.
Even though the first man to die for the cause of ‘liberty for Americans’ was a brother, and many other so-called ‘free Africans’ joined the great cause in that war (the Revolutionary War fought to ‘free’ the Colonies from the British)— and every war ever since—it was not until the 13th Amendment in 1865 that we were freed from physical bondage.
And two years later, before we were granted citizenship.
So, in essence, I told the couple in explanation, “we feel about the 4th the same way you feel about Juneteenth Day.”
The White woman said she was aware of Juneteenth, ‘the day when slavery ended.’
No, I explained, it wasn’t.
Juneteenth represents the day in 1865 when slaves in Galveston, Texas learned of the Emancipation Proclamation.
President Abraham Lincoln’s executive order only freed slaves in the Confederate states. And his action may have been illegal to boot, I explained.
As my genealogy posits, my paternal ancestors lived in Georgia and thus were freed by the proclamation.
But my maternal ancestors lived in the northern slave-holding states. And for them, ‘Dishonest Abe’s’ executive order was meaningless. They were not freed until the 13th Amendment.
Seizing on what was probably a contradiction, the man flipped the script by asking if I were right, why was Juneteenth offered as the newest holiday? And, would I celebrate it?
I can’t answer the first question, other than to assume it was politically motivated to appease growing discontent among the sheep and for the Democrats to atone for their role in slavery. Moreover, it was introduced by a Black southern congresswoman (who is from Texas), so it has relevancy.
Additionally, the Republicans who voted for it while ignoring the voting rights and police accountability bills were on board because it was their party that advanced the 13th and 14th amendments.
As ironic as it has become, it was Democrats who opposed the ending of slavery and tried to block every civil rights bill through the end of the 19th century. They also introduced apartheid (Jim Crow) to limit Black equality.
But yes, I’ll celebrate Juneteenth, even if I feel it would have been more appropriate to commemorate December 6th, the day the 13th Amendment was ratified.
While it was not an act of compassion or Christian application, Lincoln’s order did set into motion scenarios that brought about the end of the civil war and the death of slavery.
Lincoln might have, in fact, signed the order upon learning that the Confederacy had started to organize three ‘Colored’ regiments themselves, promising freedom to their slaves if the south won the war.
How that would have turned out is anybody’s guess. But I assume it would not have been more disastrous than a similar action by the British during the War for Independence (the revolutionary one), who offered freedom to American Black slaves who fought for their side.
Thousands, some historians believe, did so. Were they traitors?
Juneteenth has become a day to rejoice, reconcile, and reflect. It has become the penultimate African American cultural celebration, drawing together members of the extended family, our American tribe.
And to be sure, we are a separate and distinct tribe, a part of, but segregated from. Unfortunately, America’s hypocrisy made us into what we are.
I’ll celebrate Juneteenth as the much-needed holiday, but conversely have never felt fully committed to the idea behind the 4th.
For me, legendary Black abolitionist Frederick Douglass’s words regarding the Fourth of July are eternally etched in my mind, even though I am a Vietnam veteran and have put my life on the line for this country.
I did so knowing full well it wasn’t Uncle Sam who greeted me upon my return, but Jim Crow. Knowing I was sent across the ocean to supposedly fight for the rights of people, I would not be provided upon my return.
The 4th of July reminds us we were excluded from America’s independence, the glorious and superficial proposition that all men are created equal.
While I will applaud the concept behind the holiday, It also incites a painful memory. Ben Franklin, one of the ‘founding fathers’ and a signee of the Declaration of Independence, once declared opposition to the slave trade (not slavery) because it infected America with too many ‘Blacks and tawnys….’
Or Thomas Jefferson, the author of the U.S. Constitution who penned “that the Blacks, whether originally a distinct race or made distinct by time or circumstance, are inferior to Whites in the endowment of both body and mind.”
After a century of being miscast as the ‘Great Emancipator,’ Lincoln believed–even as he spoke of liberty and the Fourth–that “there is a physical difference between the white and black races, which I believe will forever forbid the two races living together…while they do remain together, there must be the position of superior and inferior, and I as much as any man am in favor of having the superior position assigned to the white race.”
Am I wrong to pass on these feelings of angst to my grandchildren? Should I arm them with the truth, explain the difference between ‘His-story’ and my history?
Should I educate them on the tragedies we’ve endured trying to exercise our rights as Americans?
Can, or should we, forget the tragedies that lined our path as we sought full citizenship or the promises guaranteed by the constitution? Like the New York draft riots, when Civil War draft dodgers lynched, crucified, and burned at the stake hundreds of innocent ‘free’ Colored to protest risking their lives to emancipate slaves.
Or, the New Orleans massacre of 1866 when Republicans (yeah them) held a convention to give Black people the vote, but were attacked by the racist Democrats who murdered untold numbers of ‘Coloreds.’
Should we forget Tulsa, Wilmington, or the Red Summer of 1919 when in Elaine, Arkansas over 200 Black Americans were murdered because they merely wanted to vote? Months after WWI, many Black men were targeted by racist mobs who declared the Fourth of July was a ‘White holiday.’
The event promoted noted Black leader W.E.B. Dubois to declare:
“We are cowards and jackasses if now that the war is over, we do not marshal every ounce of our brain and brawn to fight a sterner, longer, more unbending battle against the forces of hell in our own land.”
Celebrate the 4th? It’s a holiday, which means we get a day off of work. But I have mixed emotions about the message and the messengers. It’s hard to forget and forgive.
I recognize that we—African Americans—have invested more in this country than any other race. We have built, sacrificed, and bled for this country. But on the other hand, we were excluded from its independence. We were raped, tortured, and murdered because we had the audacity to question the hypocrisy of those words in the Declaration of Independence which—supposedly—define America.
I will continue to tell my children, and theirs, of our history on these shores—the good to motivate and the bad to forewarn.
And equally important, I will fight for them to gain quality educations so they can conceptualize beyond the tainted ‘His-story.’ Because only truth will set them free, no matter how painful.
I don’t know if my explanation appeased the white couple or even opened their eyes to the reality of being an African American.
But I can see a day when my concerns will become moot. That day will come when White Americans learn to respect and commemorate Juneteenth, as much as they celebrate the 4th.
For as James Baldwin once observed about the 4th and Independence, ‘You can’t swear to the freedom of all mankind and put me in chains. You can’t have it both ways.’
Hotep.
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