Since 2021, by act of Congress and the signature of President Joe Biden, June 19th is celebrated as National Independence Day, a federal holiday along with the 11 others officially recognized as national holidays: New Years Day, Martin Luther King’s birthday, Presidents’ Day (originally George Washington’s birthday), Memorial Day, Independence Day (July 4), Labor Day, Columbus Day, Veterans Day, Thanksgiving, and Christmas Day. Juneteenth celebrates the emancipation of slaves in the state of Texas on June 19, 1865, two and a half years after President Abraham Lincoln issued the Emancipation Proclamation on January 1, 1863, freeing all slaves in the states of the Confederacy.
Corrected to omit that Jefferson actually signed the Constitution. He and Madison, however, demanded that the Constitution include the Bill of Rights, so in a sense, he was also an author of that document, especially as to its First Amendment, which closely adhered to his Virginia statute on religious freedom.
Another incisive column. I’m going to Texas tomorrow to visit old friends in Bosque County in the middle of nowhere. I’ll be a long way from Governor Abbot but not the open carry dimwits who voted him into office. As I travel along the 105 degree dirt roads tomorrow I’ll be thinking of your column and the ways in which Texas is always late, whether it’s emancipation of enslaved Africans or learning from history.
I was a history major with American history as my specialty but only had one professor who talked about Juneteenth but he didn’t call it that name.It was just to point out that it took two years before former slaves in Texas realized they were free.Now we have legislators who are trying to”disappear “ what happened from 1619 on in this country.Makes me sad and also very angry.This country was built on the backs of the enslaved and that history needs to be shouted from the rooftops.Racists be damned.
Justice Jackson's Harvard love story is, indeed, an exemplar of what could be. When she was on her way to confirmation, it was clear that he was a Boston Brahmin. The fact that you reference your
"sixth great grandfather" knocks me out. Many American Jews cannot get nearly that far back. I cannot remember my mother or my father mentioning their parents' parents, who were unknown to them.
I have known families who were descended from "the signers," as they euphemistically call their blue-blooded ancestors, but that always seemed quite *other* to me. Bill Weld was in that Mayflower group, and to diffuse that fact he made the remark, "All I know is that my early ancestors sent their servants over on the Mayflower."
My mother mentioned her grandmother, my great grandmother. She taught my mother how to kill a chicken and then stick it in a cauldron of hot water in order to pluck the feathers out easily. My father was raised by his grandfather as his father died in the Polish Army when he was young. He never knew him. He tried writing down all of the relatives for my sister and I before dementia took over. Both parents were victims of the Holocaust. Actually, we have both the German and English versions of the letters my grandparents sent to my mother and her siblings as they tried to get out of Berlin. The letters are very hard for me read. The desperation...
I can only imagine that this too was how victims of slavery felt and still do feel. Last night I was watching Showtime and they had Rev. Al Sharpton’s story on which was called LOUDMOUTH. Incredible history and I was in the South at the time when Sharpton and Jesse Jackson were up and coming. Look at this documentary when you get a chance. https://www.sho.com/titles/3520786/loudmouth
If you think this is too cynical, I'm infuriated by the Washington Post article today detailing Merrick Garland, DOJ, and FBI inaction for more than a year after January 6.
Lucian--Jefferson was in Paris during the constitutional convention. He did have reservations about the constitution without a bill of rights, but he never signed the document.
A wise man that I once knew, a man brought up in poverty in Oklahoma and who didn’t have a pair of shoes until he went to school, ventured his opinion on the subject of interracial relations this way. He strongly believed that until our two races intermarried and had children and those children had children, we would never be able to put these issues behind us for good. I see signs today that give me strong reason to believe he was correct.
I have long dreamed of a racially intermarried world filled with beige-skinned people with curly brown hair. However, I won’t live long enough to see the end of the worship of white skin and straight blonde hair.
It has always been logically absurd to call someone Black who has significant non- African ancestry. For instance Barack Obama. Or Kamala Harris. Unless Black is a cultural or ethnic designation, not dependent on DNA or skin tone. Obama could just as logically be called white and Harris called Indian, as be called Black.
"Logically absurd"? Really? Unless a person of African descent can "pass" (as white), they're seen as Black in every interaction with the wider society. Back in the day, the "one-drop rule" made a person "black" even if they looked (could pass for) white. And yes, there's a hierarchy based on skin tone, with lighter-skinned Black people tending to have more access to privilege; this goes back at least to slavery times, when lighter-skinned enslaved people were more likely to work in the big house while their dark-skinned kinfolk worked in the fields.
At some point, it helps to put "logic" aside and pay attention to how things work in the real world.
Well said! Thank you. NOBODY in the USA would perceive Obama as anything other than "black." Nothing to do with logic and everything to do with perception. Plus, the lighter-skinned slaves in the antebellum South were almost always the offspring of their (male) owner and an enslaved black woman.
. . . or the offspring of an overseer, or a male family member of owner or overseer, or . . . If one sees power as partly a matter of access, virtually every white man in the vicinity has access to an enslaved black woman, and an enslaved black woman has no recourse.
Logic was never a part of deciding who to treat as inferior and deserving of enslavement. Why we still accept the old definition of Black is the question. Why put logic aside today just because we did in the past?
Kamala Harris was raised by her Indian mother to accept that she would be called Black in America, but her mother’s culture is part of her. Obama was raised by his white mother and grandparents in white culture, but it was clear he would be seen as Black, so he had to adopt American Black culture. Other people with mixed parentage are allowed to identify as mixed, not automatically assigned to the lesser status group.
My grandchildren are half-Japanese, half-European. Best described as terrific kids, no racial label needed.
Agree logic was never a consideration regarding perceived superiority-inferiority since all hoomans are hoomans, logically expressed as A=A.
See both O and Kamala as hoomans first, man, woman second. Suspect with good cause (their conduct toward others) they too see themselves in that order. Both O and Kamala were raised right, that too is self-evident.
Both were raised in American, subject to the many facets of what passes for American culture.
Geography plays the most determinative role in culture. While Kamala's Mum is Indian, raising Kamala in America is very different than had she raised her in India. Her Mum and all Mums know that. A child will absorb the culture they are exposed to far more so than the culture of their parents regardless of race or ethnicity. O documented his journey. His word is good.
Know well both faced more obstacles, tests and challenges than most of their contemporary whites did. Something they were both told would happen simply due to the color of their skin. Not how they would come to identify. How others identify them.
I grew up in a family and town that probably would have been pretty racist had enough of the population been of color, but precious few were, or were even visible. Kids simply didn't think about race, and I was a kid when Brown vs Board was handed down. It must have made an impression on me anyway, because it was one of those events so dramatic I remember receiving the news—specifically, sitting on a bed reading the New York Times story. My very first thought was, Oh, isn't that interesting—after everybody goes to school together, by the turn of the century I guess the races will be all mixed and everybody will be brown. Just as a matter of fact. It never even occurred to me any conflict would follow.
A tiny nit-pick to an OUTSTANDING piece by brother Truscott. When the General made that proclamation in Galveston on June 19, 1865, it did indeed free all the slaves of Texas. The reason, as Lucian points out was because Texas was "covered" by the Emancipation Proclamation because that proclamation only referred to states "in rebellion" against the United States. But there were a couple of slave states (Delaware and Kentucky) which never seceded which meant (ironically) that slavery was protected in those states until the ratification of the 13th Amendment.
If I have my history correct, the 13th Amendment was ratified AFTER June 19, 1865 (right now I forget the exact date). It had been passed by Congress before Lincoln's assassination but the required number of states had not yet done so.
THUS -- the last slaves were NOT freed on Juneteenth (though the Texans freed were the last ones freed according to the emancipation proclamation) but some time later when the final state ratified the 13th Amendment.
(sorry for the nit-pick --- it's the "old" historian in me!)
American History: A nation and people who extol slavers, and chattel slavery w/sex bennies by recasting them as enlightened. DOI held up as OMG how brilliant when it marked the dawn of American legal, political, economic and societal exclusion, then doubled down by enshrining and memorializing in the 2nd US Constitution. A nation and people who held up traitors as men deserving to be honored for treason with statues, monuments, military bases, roads, highways, and schools.
So, long before the same old New South's DeSantis et al introduced the latest version of whitewashing history it was routinely done by generations of historians.
Oral history remains the superior to written history. Proffer: Lucian's Jefferson-Hemmings. There are obvious reasons oral history is the superior. If they aren't obvious, think longer and deeper. Will take some unlearning, though. Unlearning is something America truly struggle with unlearning which makes new learning far harder than it is.
Respect for directly owning the harm your ancestors caused by actively participating in a cruel system, the good they’d done notwithstanding. More who have enjoyed privilege need to confront this.
But none of us - even a child of turn of the century white immigrants - have clean hands. We’ve benefitted and participated, albeit passively, in prolonging the continued indignities heaped on the descendants of those enslaved.
It’s incumbent on all of us to support laws rectifying racist policy, to call out wrongs and to be allies to individuals and organizations raising up those who’ve lived marginally in our shadow. All while we ascended.
to know you. And would be glad of your efforts as a member of his family.
I hope i misread perhaps a sense of anguish as I reread this excellent piece. By claiming by association some responsibility for what others have done in the past, you honor your antecedents. And yourself. No fault lies with you.
Great capture of the twin concepts of the sins of the father and of righting wrongs.
Cringe when Rs/cons and the right-wing shouts freedom and/or liberty in the face of centuries of genocide and diaspora of the indigenous people and the diaspora and enslavement of generations of Africans and their offspring, Americans. All legal. All rationalized. All honored. All celebrated. Juxtapose w/how the German nation and people collectively owned Hitler/Nazi wrongs and with it all its shame and dishonor.
The opportunity for post-WW2 America to reflect on how the German nation and people responded to shame and dishonor never entered the stream of American consciousness. Au contraire. Instead, America successfully covered up another shameful event, the knowledge of what was happening to Euro Jews, that to add insult to injury, turned away Jews fleeing Hitler. And in typical American fashion declared self the world's liberator of the occupied and oppressed while at home those people of color/families who fought and died were denied equal rights. "The Greatest Generation" my red ass.
The same mindset continued both at home and abroad for another generation, that continues to bleed right up to the present. So, while it is fair to point to the election and re-election of O, it is not accurate to lay it all on his skin color. That was the ad hominem part. O represented much more.
It was O's desire to change the mindset that preceded him to include acknowledgement of the sins of the father and to right past wrongs. O understood no shame~no honor. So too does Joe in his own way by living and governing as a good and decent man. The good and decent know well shame and dishonor as well as the duty and obligation to right wrongs.
Am grateful. Forgot a key element that you raised. Guilt is exclusively for those participating in the bad act(s). The [inherited] legacy of the guilty is shame and dishonor. That should be enough motivation to acknowledge wrongs and to right wrongs. Alas, it hasn't been enough.
Instead, 74+M would prefer to pretend history ain't a living thing rather it's dead thing. Am ashamed for them. Is another reason oral history is the superior to written history. People like Lucian and Ken Burns honor history by bringing it to life.
A great column for this new holiday. As someone who can’t trace his ancestors back more than two generations, and who never knew any of his grandparents, at least two of whom died before I was born (possibly a third, but no one in the family claimed to know), I envy your knowledge of your family’s lineage. You and your sibling’s attempts to right the wrongs perpetuated by some of your ancestors speaks volumes about all your dedication to the truth. I don’t know what I would do with all my genealogical information back six or more generations, but it definitely would interest me.
Well, Mr Truscott, that is so interesting. I live in Darwin, NT, Australia, and daily read with astonishment and horror, the Fb pages populated by the comments of just the same cohort of post-imperialist, post colonialist, anti Aboriginal Native Australian, bigoted racists and white supremacists that share the same European roots and DNA as yours.
Remarkably, the Fb page with some of the worst, cringe worthy, blatantly racist statement is mast headed by an Aboriginal, Native Australian woman who has joined our Federal Parliament as a far-right Member campaigning agaimst her very own people having a Constitutionally guaranteed Voice to Parliament! Sen. Jacinta Price's Fb page enables, and allows the awfullest of comments against Aboriginal peoples' intelligemce, morals, culture, traditions and includes the most arrantly despising and hateful commentary about her own kith and kin! Explain that!
As for slavery in Australia, it was officially made illegal by the British Crown in 1845, but in fact the rightless status of Aboriginal people, the original possessors of the land, still reigned supreme untl the 1967 Referendum, when Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people were first counted in the population Census, with previous counts being just estimates!
Many Aboriginal people were still indentured, unpaid labourers (aka slavea) until the 1970 's, with "Aborigines Protection Acts" in every State and Territory keeping them under the iron control, in every aspect of their lives, of various laughingly entitled 'Aborigines Welfare Boards'.
A deep and shameful vein of bigoted racism runs not far below the surface of Australian society, now being loudly, plainly and viciously triggered by the new Labor Government's upcoming Aboriginal Voice to Parliament Referendum initiative as promised by them, before the most recent national election.
Some non-whites took notice of how short the line is for attention, fame, fortune, and power simply by betraying one's own ~people~. History is replete with Prices across every continent in every century.
Takes more than blood to be Aboriginal or ~indigenous. Blood quantum is and always been a singular measurement invented by colonizing yts, as if one trait defines a specific hooman. And like any stoopid idea was contradicted by other positions on the same thing, 4e.g. in the States, the one-drop rule for Blacks.
Am confident Aboriginals have their own pet names that you may have heard for the Price-types in your land. In my ~indigenous~ culture we have a few including apple, red on the outside, yt on the inside. Some Blacks in America use Oreo for a Price-type, black on the outside, yt on the inside. Since an Aboriginal elder shared a few with me in confidence will not reveal what they were.
Ah yes. I am about to write a local column about the Republican party, which my whole family once belonged to, trying to figure out what on earth happened to them. My parents were racists, no question about that, bt they would have detested Trump. Republicans once believed in science, in democracy, in reason and knowledge and other normal things that almost every ration al person believes in. Now? It's a cult, worshiping one of the worst human beings this country has nurtured. It truly puzzles me. I'm reading the second Hemings book now, and it's truly sad. But as always, a good job, Lucianl. My distant forebears go way back, to the 1630s, but they stayed in New England and never owned slaves , and I'm gratefjul for that. Rock on.
Shared to FB with this comment: A story about the richness and complexity of a shared history, and how Juneteenth is a fitting national holiday for all Americans.
Would that your white cousins finally hear what you have been telling them these many years.
Corrected to omit that Jefferson actually signed the Constitution. He and Madison, however, demanded that the Constitution include the Bill of Rights, so in a sense, he was also an author of that document, especially as to its First Amendment, which closely adhered to his Virginia statute on religious freedom.
Another incisive column. I’m going to Texas tomorrow to visit old friends in Bosque County in the middle of nowhere. I’ll be a long way from Governor Abbot but not the open carry dimwits who voted him into office. As I travel along the 105 degree dirt roads tomorrow I’ll be thinking of your column and the ways in which Texas is always late, whether it’s emancipation of enslaved Africans or learning from history.
I was a history major with American history as my specialty but only had one professor who talked about Juneteenth but he didn’t call it that name.It was just to point out that it took two years before former slaves in Texas realized they were free.Now we have legislators who are trying to”disappear “ what happened from 1619 on in this country.Makes me sad and also very angry.This country was built on the backs of the enslaved and that history needs to be shouted from the rooftops.Racists be damned.
Justice Jackson's Harvard love story is, indeed, an exemplar of what could be. When she was on her way to confirmation, it was clear that he was a Boston Brahmin. The fact that you reference your
"sixth great grandfather" knocks me out. Many American Jews cannot get nearly that far back. I cannot remember my mother or my father mentioning their parents' parents, who were unknown to them.
I have known families who were descended from "the signers," as they euphemistically call their blue-blooded ancestors, but that always seemed quite *other* to me. Bill Weld was in that Mayflower group, and to diffuse that fact he made the remark, "All I know is that my early ancestors sent their servants over on the Mayflower."
My mother mentioned her grandmother, my great grandmother. She taught my mother how to kill a chicken and then stick it in a cauldron of hot water in order to pluck the feathers out easily. My father was raised by his grandfather as his father died in the Polish Army when he was young. He never knew him. He tried writing down all of the relatives for my sister and I before dementia took over. Both parents were victims of the Holocaust. Actually, we have both the German and English versions of the letters my grandparents sent to my mother and her siblings as they tried to get out of Berlin. The letters are very hard for me read. The desperation...
I can only imagine that this too was how victims of slavery felt and still do feel. Last night I was watching Showtime and they had Rev. Al Sharpton’s story on which was called LOUDMOUTH. Incredible history and I was in the South at the time when Sharpton and Jesse Jackson were up and coming. Look at this documentary when you get a chance. https://www.sho.com/titles/3520786/loudmouth
Keep fighting the good fight, Lucian. There are a lot of people on your side.
On the other hand, our unspoken national motto...
USA: caving to racists, white supremacists, and rich assholes since 1776
If you think this is too cynical, I'm infuriated by the Washington Post article today detailing Merrick Garland, DOJ, and FBI inaction for more than a year after January 6.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/investigations/2023/06/19/fbi-resisted-opening-probe-into-trumps-role-jan-6-more-than-year/
FBI resisted opening probe into Trump’s role in Jan. 6 for more than a year
That WAPO article was simply amazing. We saw what we saw. Everyone apparently saw it but the FBI and Merrick Garland. Vote Blue and vote hard!
Now we know what we already knew was going on….wasn’t it pretty obvious?
The Jan 6 congressional hearings laid it all out in vivid and excruciating detail. Were those guys not watching?
actually, from what I can see, they WERE watching, which is why they started acting on the information we all saw.
Sure, except they went to the kitchen to get a beer and didn't come back for 9 months
Exactly!
Yes. Yes, it was very obvious.
Lucian--Jefferson was in Paris during the constitutional convention. He did have reservations about the constitution without a bill of rights, but he never signed the document.
Okay, I'll take that as a correction from one of my favorite Jefferson historians.
A wise man that I once knew, a man brought up in poverty in Oklahoma and who didn’t have a pair of shoes until he went to school, ventured his opinion on the subject of interracial relations this way. He strongly believed that until our two races intermarried and had children and those children had children, we would never be able to put these issues behind us for good. I see signs today that give me strong reason to believe he was correct.
I have long dreamed of a racially intermarried world filled with beige-skinned people with curly brown hair. However, I won’t live long enough to see the end of the worship of white skin and straight blonde hair.
We will get there one day if climate change doesn't burn up/pollute the planet first.
I can send you photos of my family now in Atlanta, but from Memphis.
Please feel free to do that! judithtesta@comcast.net
It has always been logically absurd to call someone Black who has significant non- African ancestry. For instance Barack Obama. Or Kamala Harris. Unless Black is a cultural or ethnic designation, not dependent on DNA or skin tone. Obama could just as logically be called white and Harris called Indian, as be called Black.
"Logically absurd"? Really? Unless a person of African descent can "pass" (as white), they're seen as Black in every interaction with the wider society. Back in the day, the "one-drop rule" made a person "black" even if they looked (could pass for) white. And yes, there's a hierarchy based on skin tone, with lighter-skinned Black people tending to have more access to privilege; this goes back at least to slavery times, when lighter-skinned enslaved people were more likely to work in the big house while their dark-skinned kinfolk worked in the fields.
At some point, it helps to put "logic" aside and pay attention to how things work in the real world.
Well said! Thank you. NOBODY in the USA would perceive Obama as anything other than "black." Nothing to do with logic and everything to do with perception. Plus, the lighter-skinned slaves in the antebellum South were almost always the offspring of their (male) owner and an enslaved black woman.
. . . or the offspring of an overseer, or a male family member of owner or overseer, or . . . If one sees power as partly a matter of access, virtually every white man in the vicinity has access to an enslaved black woman, and an enslaved black woman has no recourse.
You're right, of course. I should have added that, but thanks for doing that for me.
Logic was never a part of deciding who to treat as inferior and deserving of enslavement. Why we still accept the old definition of Black is the question. Why put logic aside today just because we did in the past?
Kamala Harris was raised by her Indian mother to accept that she would be called Black in America, but her mother’s culture is part of her. Obama was raised by his white mother and grandparents in white culture, but it was clear he would be seen as Black, so he had to adopt American Black culture. Other people with mixed parentage are allowed to identify as mixed, not automatically assigned to the lesser status group.
My grandchildren are half-Japanese, half-European. Best described as terrific kids, no racial label needed.
Agree logic was never a consideration regarding perceived superiority-inferiority since all hoomans are hoomans, logically expressed as A=A.
See both O and Kamala as hoomans first, man, woman second. Suspect with good cause (their conduct toward others) they too see themselves in that order. Both O and Kamala were raised right, that too is self-evident.
Both were raised in American, subject to the many facets of what passes for American culture.
Geography plays the most determinative role in culture. While Kamala's Mum is Indian, raising Kamala in America is very different than had she raised her in India. Her Mum and all Mums know that. A child will absorb the culture they are exposed to far more so than the culture of their parents regardless of race or ethnicity. O documented his journey. His word is good.
Know well both faced more obstacles, tests and challenges than most of their contemporary whites did. Something they were both told would happen simply due to the color of their skin. Not how they would come to identify. How others identify them.
I grew up in a family and town that probably would have been pretty racist had enough of the population been of color, but precious few were, or were even visible. Kids simply didn't think about race, and I was a kid when Brown vs Board was handed down. It must have made an impression on me anyway, because it was one of those events so dramatic I remember receiving the news—specifically, sitting on a bed reading the New York Times story. My very first thought was, Oh, isn't that interesting—after everybody goes to school together, by the turn of the century I guess the races will be all mixed and everybody will be brown. Just as a matter of fact. It never even occurred to me any conflict would follow.
A tiny nit-pick to an OUTSTANDING piece by brother Truscott. When the General made that proclamation in Galveston on June 19, 1865, it did indeed free all the slaves of Texas. The reason, as Lucian points out was because Texas was "covered" by the Emancipation Proclamation because that proclamation only referred to states "in rebellion" against the United States. But there were a couple of slave states (Delaware and Kentucky) which never seceded which meant (ironically) that slavery was protected in those states until the ratification of the 13th Amendment.
If I have my history correct, the 13th Amendment was ratified AFTER June 19, 1865 (right now I forget the exact date). It had been passed by Congress before Lincoln's assassination but the required number of states had not yet done so.
THUS -- the last slaves were NOT freed on Juneteenth (though the Texans freed were the last ones freed according to the emancipation proclamation) but some time later when the final state ratified the 13th Amendment.
(sorry for the nit-pick --- it's the "old" historian in me!)
Am grateful for your piece on this day.
American History: A nation and people who extol slavers, and chattel slavery w/sex bennies by recasting them as enlightened. DOI held up as OMG how brilliant when it marked the dawn of American legal, political, economic and societal exclusion, then doubled down by enshrining and memorializing in the 2nd US Constitution. A nation and people who held up traitors as men deserving to be honored for treason with statues, monuments, military bases, roads, highways, and schools.
So, long before the same old New South's DeSantis et al introduced the latest version of whitewashing history it was routinely done by generations of historians.
Oral history remains the superior to written history. Proffer: Lucian's Jefferson-Hemmings. There are obvious reasons oral history is the superior. If they aren't obvious, think longer and deeper. Will take some unlearning, though. Unlearning is something America truly struggle with unlearning which makes new learning far harder than it is.
Respect for directly owning the harm your ancestors caused by actively participating in a cruel system, the good they’d done notwithstanding. More who have enjoyed privilege need to confront this.
But none of us - even a child of turn of the century white immigrants - have clean hands. We’ve benefitted and participated, albeit passively, in prolonging the continued indignities heaped on the descendants of those enslaved.
It’s incumbent on all of us to support laws rectifying racist policy, to call out wrongs and to be allies to individuals and organizations raising up those who’ve lived marginally in our shadow. All while we ascended.
I believe Jefferson would be proud
to know you. And would be glad of your efforts as a member of his family.
I hope i misread perhaps a sense of anguish as I reread this excellent piece. By claiming by association some responsibility for what others have done in the past, you honor your antecedents. And yourself. No fault lies with you.
We’re all responsible.
Great capture of the twin concepts of the sins of the father and of righting wrongs.
Cringe when Rs/cons and the right-wing shouts freedom and/or liberty in the face of centuries of genocide and diaspora of the indigenous people and the diaspora and enslavement of generations of Africans and their offspring, Americans. All legal. All rationalized. All honored. All celebrated. Juxtapose w/how the German nation and people collectively owned Hitler/Nazi wrongs and with it all its shame and dishonor.
The opportunity for post-WW2 America to reflect on how the German nation and people responded to shame and dishonor never entered the stream of American consciousness. Au contraire. Instead, America successfully covered up another shameful event, the knowledge of what was happening to Euro Jews, that to add insult to injury, turned away Jews fleeing Hitler. And in typical American fashion declared self the world's liberator of the occupied and oppressed while at home those people of color/families who fought and died were denied equal rights. "The Greatest Generation" my red ass.
The same mindset continued both at home and abroad for another generation, that continues to bleed right up to the present. So, while it is fair to point to the election and re-election of O, it is not accurate to lay it all on his skin color. That was the ad hominem part. O represented much more.
It was O's desire to change the mindset that preceded him to include acknowledgement of the sins of the father and to right past wrongs. O understood no shame~no honor. So too does Joe in his own way by living and governing as a good and decent man. The good and decent know well shame and dishonor as well as the duty and obligation to right wrongs.
Eloquently nailed it.
Am grateful. Forgot a key element that you raised. Guilt is exclusively for those participating in the bad act(s). The [inherited] legacy of the guilty is shame and dishonor. That should be enough motivation to acknowledge wrongs and to right wrongs. Alas, it hasn't been enough.
Instead, 74+M would prefer to pretend history ain't a living thing rather it's dead thing. Am ashamed for them. Is another reason oral history is the superior to written history. People like Lucian and Ken Burns honor history by bringing it to life.
A great column for this new holiday. As someone who can’t trace his ancestors back more than two generations, and who never knew any of his grandparents, at least two of whom died before I was born (possibly a third, but no one in the family claimed to know), I envy your knowledge of your family’s lineage. You and your sibling’s attempts to right the wrongs perpetuated by some of your ancestors speaks volumes about all your dedication to the truth. I don’t know what I would do with all my genealogical information back six or more generations, but it definitely would interest me.
Very fine piece of writing, Lucian. Thank you.
It’s my understanding that Jefferson had reservations about the Constitution, did not attend the cConvention, and never signed. Did I miss something?
He and James Madison would not sign until the Bill of Rights was included, then they agreed to.
Don’t see his name anywhere here https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Signing_of_the_United_States_Constitution
Well, Mr Truscott, that is so interesting. I live in Darwin, NT, Australia, and daily read with astonishment and horror, the Fb pages populated by the comments of just the same cohort of post-imperialist, post colonialist, anti Aboriginal Native Australian, bigoted racists and white supremacists that share the same European roots and DNA as yours.
Remarkably, the Fb page with some of the worst, cringe worthy, blatantly racist statement is mast headed by an Aboriginal, Native Australian woman who has joined our Federal Parliament as a far-right Member campaigning agaimst her very own people having a Constitutionally guaranteed Voice to Parliament! Sen. Jacinta Price's Fb page enables, and allows the awfullest of comments against Aboriginal peoples' intelligemce, morals, culture, traditions and includes the most arrantly despising and hateful commentary about her own kith and kin! Explain that!
As for slavery in Australia, it was officially made illegal by the British Crown in 1845, but in fact the rightless status of Aboriginal people, the original possessors of the land, still reigned supreme untl the 1967 Referendum, when Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people were first counted in the population Census, with previous counts being just estimates!
Many Aboriginal people were still indentured, unpaid labourers (aka slavea) until the 1970 's, with "Aborigines Protection Acts" in every State and Territory keeping them under the iron control, in every aspect of their lives, of various laughingly entitled 'Aborigines Welfare Boards'.
A deep and shameful vein of bigoted racism runs not far below the surface of Australian society, now being loudly, plainly and viciously triggered by the new Labor Government's upcoming Aboriginal Voice to Parliament Referendum initiative as promised by them, before the most recent national election.
Re: Sen. Jacinta Price.
Some non-whites took notice of how short the line is for attention, fame, fortune, and power simply by betraying one's own ~people~. History is replete with Prices across every continent in every century.
Takes more than blood to be Aboriginal or ~indigenous. Blood quantum is and always been a singular measurement invented by colonizing yts, as if one trait defines a specific hooman. And like any stoopid idea was contradicted by other positions on the same thing, 4e.g. in the States, the one-drop rule for Blacks.
Am confident Aboriginals have their own pet names that you may have heard for the Price-types in your land. In my ~indigenous~ culture we have a few including apple, red on the outside, yt on the inside. Some Blacks in America use Oreo for a Price-type, black on the outside, yt on the inside. Since an Aboriginal elder shared a few with me in confidence will not reveal what they were.
Ah yes. I am about to write a local column about the Republican party, which my whole family once belonged to, trying to figure out what on earth happened to them. My parents were racists, no question about that, bt they would have detested Trump. Republicans once believed in science, in democracy, in reason and knowledge and other normal things that almost every ration al person believes in. Now? It's a cult, worshiping one of the worst human beings this country has nurtured. It truly puzzles me. I'm reading the second Hemings book now, and it's truly sad. But as always, a good job, Lucianl. My distant forebears go way back, to the 1630s, but they stayed in New England and never owned slaves , and I'm gratefjul for that. Rock on.
Shared to FB with this comment: A story about the richness and complexity of a shared history, and how Juneteenth is a fitting national holiday for all Americans.
Would that your white cousins finally hear what you have been telling them these many years.