On June 19, 1865, two and a half years after President Abraham Lincoln’s historic Emancipation Proclamation, U.S. Maj. Gen. Gordon Granger issued General Order No. 3, which informed the people of Texas that all enslaved people were now free. Granger commanded the Headquarters District of Texas, and his troops had arrived in Galveston the previous day.
This day has come to be known as Juneteenth, a combination of June and 19th. It is also called Freedom Day or Emancipation Day, and it is the oldest known celebration commemorating the end of slavery in the United States.
The General Orders announced that there was a new military government that would enforce social order as a temporary police force. Juneteenth reminds us of the great importance of our military and police for maintaining order against those who would take away our freedoms.
The United States leaders were naturally worried that the defeated Confederates would try to undermine the principles of life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness for everyone. The situation was much like Iraq after Saddam Hussein was overthrown: the losers were seething and the government bureaucracy, police, and army were compromised. It was a very difficult situation in the Old South. Some of the ex-Confederate soldiers became criminals who relished the opportunity to shoot African Americans. Some of those murderers also fled to Texas to become bandits and sheriffs of the “Wild West.”
Some Southern slavocrat theologians had fled to Texas, perhaps thinking that on the periphery they could propagate their foul doctrines. One such theologian was Robert Lewis Dabney, the spiritual counselor and chief of staff for General Thomas Jonathan “Stonewall” Jackson in the Confederate army. He was one of the Confederacy’s most important intellectuals.
He continued to believe in the “righteousness” of slavery and opposed public schools for which White people had to pay in order to give “pretended education to the brats of black paupers.” He fled to Victoria, Texas and was appointed, unbelievably, professor of mental and moral philosophy at the University of Texas in 1883.
Consequently, General Order No. 4 was also issued declaring illegitimate all the acts of the Governor and State Legislature of Texas since Secession from the Union. Furthermore, all civil and military officers and agents of “the so-called Confederacy” were placed on parole and had to report to specific locations.
General Order No. 3 states:
“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 personal rights and rights of property between former masters and slaves, and the connection heretofore existing between them becomes that between employer and hired labor. The freedmen are advised to remain quietly at their present homes and work for wages. They are informed that they will not be allowed to collect at military posts and that they will not be supported in idleness either there or elsewhere.”
Copy from the National Archives.
Remembering Juneteenth of 2015
On the night of Wednesday June 17, 2015 in the historic African American Emanuel AME Church in Charleston, South Carolina, a young white man sat with parishioners in a Bible study on the Gospel of Mark, 4:16-20, which likens the word of God to a seed that must fall on good soil to bear fruit. After nearly an hour of listening about how to cultivate a good heart, Dylann Roof, 21, pulled out a .45 caliber handgun, shot and shot, reloading five times before exiting the church, leaving nine dead behind him.
He picked a church to do his evil deeds; he picked a people, African Americans, as his symbolic targets; and he picked a prominent city to catch attention and provoke a race war, according to news accounts.
We talked with the religious leaders in Bed Stuy, Brooklyn about the denial of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness to the nine members of the Emanuel AME Church. Nine members of the American family were snatched away from us.
The religious leaders didn’t want to separate the racial and spiritual dimensions of the attack. To many, the racist attack was the sign of a demonic presence and the continuing stain of the sin of racism.
“It’s Satan…Satan doesn’t want people to be all they can be.”
From New Life in Christ Ministries Day Care, Susan Sampson, mourned, “The shooting in South Carolina reminds us that there is a spiritual war going on. Satan is on a rampage. Anyone who calls on the name of Jesus–[Satan] comes out at you in an attack.”
The hand of the murderer was driven by spiritual desperation. “In his blind rage [Roof] is looking for something, an escape from loneliness,” said Sampson, who is the wife of Gary Sampson, the pastor of New Life. “People like him “are jealous, sometimes, of the relationships that the children of God have.” She mentioned that the Charleston AME members showed him love and friendship, which can bring people out of demonic fury. But not this time.
Elder Robert Jones of Believers Gateway to Freedom Church maintained a sense of compassion, even pity, on the young man who was afflicted with “spiritual wickedness.”
“There’s a lot of confused people in the world,” Jones observed. “[Roof] was one of them. Some people look healthy but they’re missing one important part. If people recognized [who they are in Jesus], that would give them ammunition to fight [the wickedness].”
If a person doesn’t know God, suggested a leader at BedStuy’s Ba Beta Kristiyan Haile Selassie I, then they cannot know who they are. He would tell Roof, “look inside yourself, find the God inside yourself.”
“Before I knew [God], I was full of confusion, too,” attests the Rastafarian leader (he prefers that we not use his name). “Roof needs to educate himself on his own roots.”
Juneteenth is part of our roots. Let us count our blessings and ecstatically sway in our freedoms. It is traditional in the African American community to get themselves to church to sing of freedom together.
Lead reporter on Bed-Stuy interveiws was Pauline Dolle. Additional reporting by Tony Carnes, Sadie Cruz, Shiloh Frederick, and Elizabeth Simakoff.
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