JUNETEENTH - Celebrating while Remembering, June 19, 2012

June 19, 2012

 USA-WORLD - June 19, 2012 is the 146 year of celebration of Juneteenth Day.

Here's to the celebrants across the globe that remember and share with others a time in African American History that benchmark slavery in the United States of America.  May we know that the transition is yet in progress.

Juneteenth is the oldest known celebration commemorating the ending of slavery in the United States. Dating back to 1865, it was on June 19^th that the Union soldiers, led by Major General Gordon Granger, landed at Galveston, Texas with news that the war had ended and that the enslaved were now free. Note that this was two and a half years after President Lincoln’s Emancipation Proclamation - which had become official January 1, 1863. The Emancipation Proclamation had little impact on the Texans due to the minimal number of Union troops to enforce the new Executive Order. However, with the surrender of General Lee in April of 1865, and the arrival of General Granger’s regiment, the forces were finally strong enough to influence and overcome the resistance.  Much More . . .

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The Spirit of Juneteenth
"But, if this part of our history could be told in such a way that those chains of the past, those shackles that physically bound us together against our wills could, in the telling, become spiritual links that willingly bind us together now and into the future - then that painful Middle Passage could become, ironically, a positive connecting line to all of us whether living inside or outside the continent of Africa..."     
Tom Reed
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