'Of Love, Pain And Passioned Revolt, Then Farewell, My Beloved ‘Til It’s Freedom Day': Juneteenth 2024
Ms. Opal Lee comes home.
On New Year’s Eve, 1862, Black Americans stayed up up until midnight, counting down the minutes until the new year arrived. This was known as “Freedom’s Eve,” and first Watch Night services took place in churches and homes across the nation. The enslaved people in Confederate states were declared legally free (more or less) on January 1, 1863 when the U.S. government denied racist traitors their human property.
Union soldiers reportedly marched onto plantations and across cities in the South reading the world-shaking words from Lincoln’s Emancipation Proclamation. Many of those soldiers were Black, and I can imagine the joy they felt. The future might finally exist for them.
However, Lincoln’s proclamation didn’t magically break a centuries-long curse and trigger a rousing dance number like “A Brand New Day (Everybody Rejoice)” from The Wiz. Wherever the evil Confederacy still maintained control, Black people could never be free. This remains true today.
Freedom would not come for all Black people until June 19, 1865 when 2,000 Union troops arrived in Galveston Bay, Texas, and announced that slavery had ended for the more than 250,000 Black people in the state. That was almost half of Texas’s population total at the time. When the marginalized are fully oppressed, their numbers aren’t a problem, but once they’re free, white people start talking about “invasion.” This is why so many former Confederate states would quickly implement Jim Crow laws, but that’s a history lesson banned in Florida for another time. Today, we celebrate Juneteenth, when slavery in America ended two years and more than two centuries late.
Black people have celebrated Juneteenth for generations, but it finally became a federal holiday in 2021. We owe this long overdue national recognition to 96-year-old activist Opal Lee, who is known as the grandmother of Juneteenth.
Lee grew up in Texas, where she remembers childhood Juneteenth celebrations. Unfortunately, on June 19, 1939, when she was 12, 500 white rioters set fire to her family’s home in a predominantly white Fort Worth neighborhood.
"The people didn’t want us,” she said, referring to the white population. “They started gathering. The paper said the police couldn’t control the mob. My father came with a gun and police told them if he busted a cap they’d let the mob have us. They started throwing things at the house and when they left, they took out the furniture and burned it and burned the house.”
White people invaded and plundered her home out of racist spite and envy. This was their own ironic commemoration of Juneteenth. You see, when the enslaved were finally freed after the Civil War, they had nothing to show for their lives in bondage aside from the scars. There was no precursor to the Marshall Plan. The United States government didn’t offer the formerly enslaved any money or property. Many were forced to continue working for the very same white people who’d enslaved them, and few were compensated fairly if at all.
Despite starting from nothing, some Black communities managed to build wealth, but at every turn, their hard work became a target for white resentment. It’s the story of Tulsa, Rosewood, and so many other cities where Black people dared to grasp the American dream.
In 2016, when Lee was almost 90, she walked from Fort Worth to Washington DC to advocate for a national Juneteenth holiday. Even after Sen. Ron Johnson blocked the holiday in 2020, Lee was convinced it would happen eventually.
“My point is let's make it a holiday in my lifetime,” Lee said defiantly, fully aware of her own mortality. Fortunately, Lee outlived Johnson’s ignorance — well, on this specific issue — and not only did she see Juneteenth become a federal holiday in 2021, she’s still here to appreciate it.
She’s also not ready to live this earthly battlefield, either. “I’m not going to sit in a rocker and wait for the Lord to call me,” Lee said in an interview last year. “He’s going to have to catch me.” That’s the spirit of the revolution.
Friday, the 97-year-old Lee received the keys to a new house constructed on the same lot where a racist mob destroyed her family’s home 85 years ago. Like so many generations of Black people, Lee’s family never talked about what happened on June 19, 1939. Instead, they tried to move forward and rebuild as best they could. Recently, perhaps feeling the Lord gaining on her, Lee started thinking about getting the lot back. When she learned that Trinity Habitat for Humanity had acquired the property, she called up Gage Yager, the CEO and a longtime friend. This was first time Yager had heard what Lee’s family had endured. He sold her the lot for $10, because that was exactly the right thing to do.
“I’m so happy I don’t know what to do,” Lee said from her rocking chair. She plans to hold an open house so she can welcome her new neighbors. “Everybody will know that this is going to be a happy place.”
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This one hit me in the gut. Thank you, SER.
This is such a beautiful article.
And I note how so many chuds out there like to say "oh it was so long ago, get over it." A fair number of people subject to Jim Crow *are still alive,* after all. They only say things like this to play in our faces. And we will not forget this history no matter what the unreconstructed among us, the unreconstructed in power will do.
Thank you for this piece, SER.