Happy Juneteenth!

Today is my birthday, and growing up I knew that I was exactly one year older than Garfield the cat. (The link will probably only work today - sorry.

But on my 20th birthday, I was doing a summer of service in San Marcos Texas, and I learned that June 19th is also known as Juneteenth. Abraham Lincoln signed the Emancipation Proclamation -- freeing all the slaves in the United States -- on January 1, 1863, but that order couldn't really be put into effect until the rebelling states were brought back into the Union. On June 19, 1865, slaves all over Texas learned that they had been freed from slavery. In Texas, this is a state holiday.

Last night on NPR, they had a story about the importance of freed and escaped slaves to the North's war effort. African American soldiers were 25% of the (integrated) American Navy, and it was a troupe of African American soldiers who captured the capital of the Confederacy - Richmond, VA. It hadn't occurred to me before the difference freed slaves made in the Civil War. I'd always imagined an intra-white fight, with slaves waiting passively to be freed. The truth is, free slaves fought to bring an end to slavery in the United States.

When the colonies fought in the Revolutionary War, they were fighting to end taxation without representation. They were fighting for political and economic freedom. When former slaves fought, it was to end the brutal and dehumanizing practice of slavery. They were fighting for political, economic, personal, familial, cultural freedom. It is hard to capture quickly the suffering, the cost of slavery, and it is indeed America's original sin. But it is also a tremendous accomplishment that the slaves had an important part in winning their own freedom. This is no less an Independence Day for Americans than July 4th.