What’s in the Name Juneteenth?

I explore the deeper truth of Juneteenth, the language of liberation, and why names matter in our healing and collective memory.

I am a big celebrant of the Juneteenth holiday.  I have noticed that some people don’t seem to respect or give the holiday the importance it deserves.  However, as a person of African descent, I acknowledge its importance and what my life could have been if slavery had not been abolished.

One of the lessons I learned from a spiritual teacher many years ago is that the person who has their foot on another’s neck is just as bound as the person being held down. As I imagine what America would have been like if slavery had not ended, I’ve concluded that not only would it have been a nightmare for those enslaved, but it would have been just as dreadful for the enslavers.

If you only read or watch a movie about the regular beatings, lynchings, and sexual abuse of the enslaved, it can be difficult to stomach, no matter who you are. Most of us find these acts abhorrent and hard to digest even in dramatizations.

As we consider the holiday of Juneteenth, perhaps we can all find something to celebrate in the fact that we don’t have to live in a country where beatings, lynchings, rape, and economic violence are normal.

Most of us can usually ignore many things and continue to live in our little bubble, but the things that happened in the U.S during slavery were simply gruesome, and in the absence of media, most cases went unreported. I don’t love the name of the holiday, although I’m happy it exists.  The name really says that no one was really clear on when this “freedom” really happened. 

Freedom was a moving target for the enslaved. The Civil War ended on April 9th, 1865. The date of June 19, 1865, over two months later, was the date on which the Emancipation Proclamation began to be enforced in the state of Texas.  Between those dates, some of the enslaved continued to be enslaved and abused, and were not told about their freedom.

There is always great sadness in humans’ inhumanity to humans.  There is some sadness in the underpinning of this name.  It tells of the resistance many had to the ending of slavery.  It tells of the reckless disregard of the rights of the enslaved. It tells of the fact that one set of humans was okay with continuing the abuse and felt no sense of urgency to release the enslaved from suffering. This was even though they founded the creation of the nation on Christian principles.

Often when I read and see the things that happen in the U.S., my question is: What would Yeshua Ben Yosef (known to most of us today in English as Jesus Christ), the Palestinian Jew, say about it?

If you have read my previous writings, you’ve probably heard me talk about what aliens would think if they were watching humans interact on planet Earth.  This episode is certainly one that would leave them scratching their heads.

Juneteenth is also known as Freedom Day. That is the one I’ll go with. Happy Freedom Day!

OSB