On Juneteenth by Annette Gordon-Reed

On Juneteenth by Annette Gordon Reed published by Liveright (2021) 151 pages.

Juneteenth is now widely celebrated. In many places it is a holiday. It was not always so. A native of Texas where Juneteenth began, Annette Gordon-Reed writes in her new book:

To my surprise some years back, I began to hear people outside of my home state, Texas, talk about, and actually celebrate the holiday “Juneteenth.” June 19, 1865, shortened to “Juneteenth,” was the day that enslaved African Americans in Texas were told that slavery had ended, two years after the Emancipation Proclamation had been signed, and just over two months after Confederate General Robert E. Lee had surrendered to Ulysses S. Grant at Appomattox. Despite the formal surrender, the Confederate army had continued to fight on in Texas until mid-May. It was only after they finally surrendered that Major General Gordon Granger, while at his headquarters in Galveston, prepared General Order Number 3, announcing the end of legalized slavery in the state. (p. 11)

Gordon-Reed writes that “The truth is, I confess here, that I was initially annoyed, at least mildly so,” of the non-Texas Juneteenths. Of course, her mild “annoyance” did not last long. While Granger’s order was specific to Texas, it has come to represent a national celebration of the end of slavery. 

The book itself is short, just over one hundred and fifty pages, and it is an essay reflecting on how Texas history is remembered, and how slavery was left out of the narrative for more than a century, rather than a detailed history of Juneteenth. Along with her reflections as a historian, Gordon-Reed offers memories her family members shared about their ancestors’ experiences around Juneteenth after their enslavement ended. 

The iconic image Texas likes to present of itself is the cowboy, a free and independent man. Annette Gordon-Reed reminds us that among the revered founders of the Republic of Texas were more slave-owning planters than free ranging cowboys. She writes that when she was a girl in school, “When slavery in Texas was mentioned, it was presented as an unfortunate event that was to be acknowledged but quickly passed over.” Black students were told to “Remember the Alamo” but to forget about their own ancestors’ enslavement. Blacks had lived in, and been enslaved in, Texas long before 1619, but their history had been erased in the schools of Gordon-Reed’s youth.

Among the most moving parts of this book are Gordon-Reed’s reminiscences of her school days near Houston. She was one of a small group of students who desegregated the local “white” elementary school. Unlike the “Little Rock Nine” who were harassed by mobs as they entered their school, Gordon-Reed remembers that the administrators, at least, did everything they could to make her and her small contingent of fellow Black school children feel welcome. While some of the better off white students shunned them, Gordon-Reed remembers with affection a family of poor white girls who embraced her.  

Still, the history she would learn over the next twelve years was history as white people saw it. She took Texas history twice and it focused on the Founding Fathers of Texas, men described as freedom loving, brave, and opposed to tyranny. What she did not learn about, and even what her white fellow-students were never told, was the centrality of slavery to early Texas life.  She did not know that Section 6 of the Texas Constitution only allowed whites to become citizens. Nor did she read Section 9 of the Constitution which said that: 

SEC. 9. All persons of color who were slaves for life previous to their emigration to Texas, and who are now held in bondage, shall remain in the like state of servitude: provided, The said slave shall be the bona-fide property of the person so holding said slave as aforesaid. Congress shall pass no laws to prohibit emigrants from bringing their slaves into the republic with them, and holding them by the same tenure by which such slaves were held in the United States; nor shall congress have power to emancipate slaves; nor shall any slaveholder be allowed to emancipate his or her slave or slaves without the consent of congress, unless he or she shall send his or her slave or slaves without the limits of the republic. No free person of African descent, either in whole or in part, shall be permitted to reside permanently in the republic without the consent of congress…(p. 106)

The book also discusses the changes made in the racial system at the end of the Civil War and during the early years of Reconstruction. These changes are swept away, but their memory is not. The post-war world lived on in the memory of the state’s Black communities through celebrations like Juneteenth. 

Unfortunately, until recently, young white people were not taught this history of racial domination and contestation. Gordon-Reed says that:

I often encounter great hesitancy about, and impatience with, discussing race when talking about the American past. The obvious difficulty with those kinds of complaints is that people in the past—in the overall American context and in the specific context of Texas—talked a lot about, and did a lot about, race. It isn’t some newly discovered fad topic. Race is right there in the documents—official and personal. It would take a concerted effort not to consider and analyze the subject, and I realize that evasion is exactly what happened in many of the textbooks that Americans used in their school social studies and history classes. This, in part, accounts for the pained accusations about “revisionist” history when historians talk about things that people had never been made aware of in their history educations. (p. 107)

This book is not a deep-dive into the 156 year history of Juneteenth, but is a great dip into how one future  Pulitzer Prize-winning historian learned to understand and appreciate the holiday as well as a discussion of how we teach and learn history. It is written with a light touch and could easily qualify as a Summer Beach Read in spite of its mostly serious content.

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Author: Patrick Young

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