June 18, 2023
Are you ready for the Juneteenth federal holiday tomorrow?
By Thomas Lifson
Monday, the nineteenth of June, is our newest federal holiday (just 2 years old), Juneteenth, and federal workers get yet another day’s pay without having to work for it. Since the federal workforce is heavily overrepresented with black workers (18.2% of the federal workforce versus 12.6% of the population), the words “disparate impact” come to mind, benefitting African Americans with a paid holiday that not too many other employees get, judging by the fact that I was able to book two appointments with service providers tomorrow before I even realized Monday was holiday.
Juneteenth, we are told, commemorates the end of slavery, even though President Lincoln’s
Emancipation Proclamation was issued two-and-half-years earlier. As Henry Louis Gates wrote, explaining the holiday:
The First Juneteenth
“The people of Texas are informed that, in accordance with a proclamation from the Executive of the United States, all slaves are free. This involves an absolute equality of personal rights and rights of property between former masters and slaves, and the connection heretofore existing between them becomes that between employer and hired labor. The freedmen are advised to remain quietly at their present homes and work for wages. They are informed that they will not be allowed to collect at military posts and that they will not be supported in idleness either there or elsewhere.” —General Orders, Number 3; Headquarters District of Texas, Galveston, June 19, 1865
When Maj. Gen. Gordon Granger issued the above order, he had no idea that, in establishing the Union Army’s authority over the people of Texas, he was also establishing the basis for a holiday, “Juneteenth” (“June” plus “nineteenth”), today the most popular annual celebration of emancipation from slavery in the United States. After all, by the time Granger assumed command of the Department of Texas, the Confederate capital in Richmond had fallen; the “Executive” to whom he referred, President Lincoln, was dead; and the 13th Amendment abolishing slavery was well on its way to ratification.
But Granger wasn’t just a few months late. The Emancipation Proclamation itself, ending slavery in the Confederacy (at least on paper), had taken effect two-and-a-half years before, and in the interim, close to 200,000 black men had enlisted in the fight. So, formalities aside, wasn’t it all over, literally, but the shouting?
more
https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2023/06/are_you_ready_for_the_juneteenth_federal_holiday_tomorrow.html
