By Sam Omatseye
The anniversary of Juneteenth, observed every June 19, commemorates the date that the first notice of the legal end of slavery was issued and distributed publicly, and has become a national celebration observed by millions. The celebration of Juneteenth conjures the image of Blacks unhinged from the throes of slavery. But the irony of the month is often lost in the festivities, the razzmatazz of parades, the rhapsodies of songs, the choreography of dancers, taste-bud thrills and high-flown oratory.
The irony lies in ignorance.
Today, many Blacks, as well as those of other races, mistakenly believe Juneteenth signified a new dawn of freedom for slaves in the last quarter of the19th century. In the same way, Blacks in Texas and most of the South back then mistakenly thought they were still legally slaves (although the law had set them free).
President Abraham Lincoln had enshrined the Emancipation Proclamation on Jan. 1, 1863. But Blacks in Texas did not know until two and a half years later, when the hooves of a Union general’s horse clattered in bringing the news. In a triumphal ride into Galveston, Texas, General Gordon Grander told nearly 250,000 Blacks that Lincoln had proclaimed their liberty. The date was June 19, 1865.
Blacks were ecstatic. They celebrated, but not with an abundance of food, dance or glamour. They had nothing but the clothes on their body, the master’s roofs over their heads and the master’s soil under their feet. Freedom was on the horizon, far beyond the plantation, a distant thing they craved but could not seize.
That is the poignant irony of Juneteenth and the emancipation. It did not take long for their ecstasy to pass into despair and de facto servitude.
“Freedom meant us could leave where us’d been born and bred, but it meant, too, dat us had to scratch for own selves,” said Charles Davenport, one of those Blacks tasting the dubious sweetness of liberty.
“I want to move away and feel ontirely free and see what I cen do by myself,” said a certain Mr. Lewis.
Everybody was free, but no one was free.
They had to come to terms with the sharecropper tyrannies, the snare of new laws, the beginning of a regime of lynching, the false status of citizenship, and the elusiveness of family.
The country was to learn that freedom did work without equality, without equity, without enabling laws and institutions, without the infrastructure that affirmed the human dignity that Blacks expected from the Proclamation.
So men like Lewis and Davenport, having little education and few rights, were at the mercy of a nation that was looking forward. Yet the vast majority of white citizens were corralled in the past.
Freedom became a condescending term. Blacks were seen as a “child race,” those who were free but could not care for themselves. They were not expected to have the smarts, the independence of thought, nor an understanding of the challenges of their new status as citizens of the United States.
When novelist Ralph Ellison wrote his novel titled Juneteenth, he characterized it as “a symbolic acknowledgment that liberation is a never-ending task of self, group and nation.”
This is why Juneteenth projects center on achieving equality in contemporary areas such as better schools in the inner city, justice from the judicial system, equity in the distribution of high-paying jobs and in political representation.
Congress enshrined certain codes of law to shield any powers that the constitution conferred on Blacks. One of them was the 14th Amendment, which gave citizenship to everyone born on American soil. But the southern states circumvented the law, especially laws pertaining to voting. This led Congress to pass the 15th Amendment, which gave Blacks the right to vote. But the laws did not always translate into practical application.
One of the ways states diluted the enfranchisement of African Americans was to pass laws about certain petty crimes or misdemeanors, like theft and burglary. Convicts of such crimes lost their right to votes. Since Blacks lacked any strong material independence, they were likely to commit such crimes.
That was not the only political challenge. Abraham Lincoln had belonged to the Republican Party, so in the polls, the Democratic Party coerced Blacks to vote for them. The Ku Klux Klan, which became racism’s militant wing, tried to enforce this. The federal government sent troops to protect Blacks from the onslaughts of the KKK. But this was not maintained, as General Grant withdrew a good part of his troops.
One of the inhibitions to voting was the poll tax, which Blacks were asked to pay before voting. For a people who had not begun to earn enough to keep body and soul together, extra money for voting was a huge challenge. They were also asked by some states to pass literacy tests. Most of them, having no education, could not read and write. In some cases, they were asked to interpret the constitution, which many whites could not.
Other than political challenges, Blacks had to deal with the pressures of economic independence. The sharecropping system was a huge burden. Blacks, most of whom had no place to go, remained working for their masters, who owned the land. Certain codes forbade Blacks from owning any land.  Section 3 of the Louisiana Code said: “No Negro shall be permitted to rent or keep a house within said parish.” Another law, section 4, said, “Every Negro is required to be in the regular service of a white person, or former owner, who shall be held responsible for the conduct of such a Negro.”
Also crippling was section 9, which said, “No Negro shall sell, barter, or exchange any articles of merchandise or traffic within said parish.”
The sharecropping system characterized the hold that post-slavery institutions had on Blacks. Blacks, who toiled on the land got poor compensation from their masters, who would not pay until harvest. Blacks were compelled to buy supplies on credit from stores, which were mostly owned by the masters. By the time the harvest cycles came, the Black sharecropper owed much more than his wages, which effectively bound him to the land and the owner.
Blacks wanted to enjoy the fruits of genuine liberty, which meant voting, securing independent sources of income and sending their children to school.
“If I cannot do like the white man, I am not free,” remarked a Black ex-slave.
Many Blacks saw education as their way out of the rut. With the help of the Freedmen’s Bureau, they began to attend schools. By 1870, there were 4,000 Black schools in the country, according to Ann Byers in her book African-American History From Emancipation to Today, adding that four years later 40 percent of Blacks were in school.
Oliver Howard, who was the director of the bureau, had identified education “as the true relief from dependency.”
He ensured schools like Howard University existed in southern states where racism was rampant, such as Georgia, Tennessee and Virginia. The schools were not just built for Blacks. But whites, not seeing Blacks as equals, stayed away from them. That was how such schools became historically Black colleges.
The movement from rural to urban areas helped to break some of the plantation hold on Blacks. They also learned that they had to build their own communities since they could not stay with whites. Booker T. Washington popularized the notion of Black independence, which, today remains one of the most important factors of Black liberation.
Editor’s note: Juneteenth is the oldest nationally celebrated commemoration of the ending of slavery in the United States. From its Galveston, Texas origin in 1865, the observance of June 19 as the African American Emancipation Day has spread across the United States and beyond. The holiday honors June 19, the day slaves in Galveston, Texas finally learned President Lincoln had signed the Emancipation Proclamation two years earlier.