This essay should be read with a tone of gravity that we, in 2024, could never fully grasp the plight that the black ancestors of this country experienced over the 400-year period of enslavement. Whether you support the Confederate States or The Union, the Civil War ended in a Union victory, that freed enslaved africans forever.
The remnants of the Civil War will forever be an undertone, that breeds the segregation being perpetuated in state legislation. The Confederate Army's defeat carries a deeply rooted bitterness, with a side of stubborn and steadfast allegiance to an ideal that propped up white supremacy and insisted upon black inferiority. As we know, confederate advocates purposefully uphold this supremacy ideal to maintain an economic and social advantage over the black population in America. Today, in our country's diverse demographic, it is no longer about the segregation of race alone, but a segregation pertaining to the ideals of freedom in totality, and moral questions about who’s freedom is worth protecting, worth honoring, and worth upholding.
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What these six states have done, namely Alabama and South Carolina according to The Guardian, is ask their citizens to choose what they will honor, picking the Confederate Memorial Day for Paid-Time Off (PTO) or choosing Juneteenth (associated with the Union's Victory) as their Paid-Time Off. Though the bills have yet to pass officially, this narrow-minded lens is currently on the state legislative floor for discussion, preventing the states from recognizing Juneteenth officially and permanently at this juncture.
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This decision directly asserts that Juneteenth and Confederate Memorial Day holidays are mutually exclusive, which could not be further from the truth. Though these two entities were at war, after the Union’s victory, our constitution has since made provisions for any future insurrectionism and has welcomed the Southern states into the Union, to which they have, I presume, reluctantly participated since the time of losing the war.
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This legislative debate suggests that Juneteenth, a celebration of liberation is a direct assault on the historical lineage that fought to keep blacks enslaved. These six former confederate states have chosen to uphold an oppressive model, without remorse, without regard for the United States Constitution, the Rule of Law, and at a basic level, accepting their defeat. Indeed, we continue to have conversations in the present day, where there are dividing perspectives about how we commemorate the time of the Civil War, primarily in the form of statues, holidays, and the naming of buildings with historical significance.
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Every thought that comes as I reflect on Juneteenth, is that if enslavement was not the backbone of the Southern economic society (as most confederate advocates believe) and the enslaved black people were not of significant value, how come so many Confederate soldiers lost their lives to protect the legal right to own slaves? If the southern families were so intelligent, resourceful, and plentiful in agricultural attainment without black contribution to their plantations, why fight until the death to keep them in chains? The answer lies within their complete dependency on black labor, black enslavement, and the black enterprise to keep their economic entities afloat. The Union differed in that they understood economically, socially, and morally, this Atlantic Slave Trade model would not be sustained for much longer. Freedom was always inevitable.
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Commemorating Confederate practices, in my view, only exacerbates the South's inability to stand on their own merit, their own work, and their own legacy as they used enslaved labor to build everything they had. If we recall the sole purpose of the Atlantic slave trade, it was indeed to extract the wealth of knowledge, strength, and fruitfulness that the Africans possessed in cultivating the earth, which the English colonist rule could never equally achieve on their own.
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If we are to believe there was honor in the Confederacy, what exactly are we honoring? It seems the Confederacy learned very little about freedom from America's gaining independence from the British rule. Truth be told, slavery should have ended July 4, 1776, not June 19, 1865. Â I encourage every F.O. reader to review Frederick Douglass keynote address on July 4, 1852 "A Nation's Story: What to the Slave is the Fourth of July?"
The United States of America we know today was made possible by the Emancipation Proclamation, signed by Abraham Lincoln, a Republican President and one of the most intellectual presidents in American History. Without this crucial piece of legislation and a hard-fought civil war that included Black soldiers, this country would know nothing of civil rights, voting rights, women's rights, gay rights, or any landmark legislation that came afterward.
Juneteenth is truly freedom for all, not just freedom for some. It’s a sobering reality to watch six states cling to the depths of a dark past, without charting a path toward the future that the rest of us are already decidedly living in.
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Rebuttals are always welcome,
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Dr. Jade M. Felder
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