What is this flag? What does it represents? What is Juneteenth? Why you should care?
Synopsis of Juneteenth: officially Juneteenth National Independence Day is a federal holiday in the United States. It is celebrated annually June 19 to commemorate the ending of slavery in the United States.
About 500,000 African Americans were held in Texas in bondage and other south states brought to Texas their Slaves and didn’t want the Confederate to die. This was the last attempt to get a free labor going. Free to the workers who gave life, blood, sweat, tears and family without really being asked. Free because of not being given a wage or fair shot at life. Being looked at as less then. A nation and many industries started in the blood, sweat and pain of others left defenseless. Pain of physical labor and beating for trying to escape or not being efficient. Pain of being separated from loved ones or the only home you ever known. The pain of being except to grow up before you’re ready and especially before you are really able to understand what that means to be “grown up”. Becoming a victim of assault. Dying because of lack of food and sanity. Dying because of diseases. No one person could really understand this torture and torment unless it had been experienced for generations. The mentally and verbally abused passing it on for generations felt even in 100s of years after without a key to the stem and where to go from there.
Let’s unload the first question shall we: What is the Flag above? It is the Juneteenth Flag.
What does Juneteenth represent?
Juneteenth has also been called Jubilee Day, Emancipation Day (Texas), Freedom Day and also Black Independence Day.
Celebrations include: Festivals, Parties, Parades, Church Services.
Observation, Related to, Significance and Started by: African – American history, culture, and progress, Emancipation Day and Honor America Day, Emancipation of enslaved people in the United States. Early celebrations were held by Christian Churches and the Freedmen’s Bureau.
On June 19th 1856 Gordon Granger Union General stated:
” The people of Texas are informed that in accordance with a Proclamation from the Executive of the United States, all slaves are free. This involves an absolute equality of rights and rights of property between former masters and slaves, and the connection heretofore existing between them becomes that between employer and hired laborer.”
Paul Lawrence Dunbar wrote Sympathy he has a lot to say about Emancipation that is still the course of truth in 2024.
Sympathy
BY PAUL LAURENCE DUNBAR
I know what the caged bird feels, alas!
When the sun is bright on the upland slopes;
When the wind stirs soft through the springing grass,
And the river flows like a stream of glass;
When the first bird sings and the first bud opes,
And the faint perfume from its chalice steals—
I know what the caged bird feels!
I know why the caged bird beats his wing
Till its blood is red on the cruel bars;
For he must fly back to his perch and cling
When he fain would be on the bough a-swing;
And a pain still throbs in the old, old scars
And they pulse again with a keener sting—
I know why he beats his wing!
I know why the caged bird sings, ah me,
When his wing is bruised and his bosom sore,—
When he beats his bars and he would be free;
It is not a carol of joy or glee,
But a prayer that he sends from his heart’s deep core,
But a plea, that upward to Heaven he flings—
I know why the caged bird sings!
Paul Laurence. Dunbar, ““Sympathy.”” from The Complete Poems of Paul Laurence Dunbar. (New York: Dodd, Mead and Company, )
In conclusion why should we care?
If we don’t know the world we’ll just belong to the devil. The devil is where hate lives and stems from.
Love and kindness goes a 1000 times farther than evil.
Acceptance of all is the most important thing to get us through life.
Thank you to my friend Judy B for letting me in on her knowledge no matter whether big or small to me about a topic never talked about or taught in schools.
Sweet thoughts by Marie 