"Happy Holidays!"

A man carries a Black Liberation flag through a Juneteenth celebration at the memorial for George Floyd outside Cup Foods on June 19, 2020, in Minneapolis

Today is a dual celebration... It's Father's Day and also "Juneteenth" or "Freedom Day" which is now a federal holiday (and will be celebrated tomorrow).

My father in a work photo about 10 days before I was born

I've written about my father a number of times, including about my coming out to him when he was 87 and I was a newly out 40 year old.  You can read about it here.  I also recently shared one of my favorite stories of my father, in fact, it's the story I used to eulogize him in 2011.  I love and miss my father and I am thankful for the many things he taught me.

Now, on to "Juneteenth."

"Juneteenth" is a bittersweet holiday that in the past was only celebrated by black people and mostly in the south and southwest.  It commemorates the day in 1865 that the still enslaved blacks of Galveston, Texas learned from the arrival of Union troops that they had been freed by Lincoln's Emancipation Proclamation some 2 1/2 years before hand and that at long last the war between the states was over.  Those two facts had not been shared with the slaves by their masters who continued to exploit their labor and inflict the cruelties of slavery upon them despite the question having been settled decisively with the end of the war.

And so, with the slaves of Galvaston, Texas becoming the last in the failed Confederacy to learn of their freedom, a black holiday was born with the reading of the "Emancipation Proclamation," by Union Army general Gordon Granger on June 19, 1865.  To this day, readings of the proclamation are still quite common as a part of the holiday celebrations and so without further ado:

And yes, even this most famous of political and moral declarations is bittersweet and tinged with opportunism and avarice.  Since it only freed the slaves in rebellious states, who would of course not recognize his authority, or even make known to their enslaved populations that Lincoln had taken this desperate act.  Further, it specifically enumerated that certain slaves including those in the northern border states were excluded from emancipation.  And moreover, any who were eventually freed in the rebellious states were advised to continue in their labors for "wages..." So yeah, not exactly the heroic act that we're taught and led to believe it is in school. Nevertheless, it was the beginning of the end of chattel slavery in the United States.

And yet, despite a long and storied struggle for freedom, equality and justice, I somehow continually find myself asking, "Are we really free...?"  And I always answer myself with, "Poor fellow, my country" which is taken from the title of the longest book I've ever read. It's about another "white nation" struggling to know what to do with their "black fellas."

"Happy Juneteenth"

"Fear Eats the Soul"