Post by Rabbi Neil on Jun 20, 2020 2:05:37 GMT
By Rabbi Jenny Goldfried Amswych
On June 19, 1865, Major General Gordon Granger arrived in Galveston Texas, the last slave-owning holdout in the South ignoring Lincoln’s Emancipation Proclamation of the 1st of January 1863 and the Robert E Lee’s surrender on April 9, 1865. There, he delivered General Order Number 3:
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 at their present homes and work for wages. They are informed that they will not be allowed to collect at military posts; and they will not be supported in idleness either there or elsewhere.
Now the 13th Amendment passed the Senate with a 2/3 majority in April 1864, as the civil war was raging. It took until January 31, 1865 to convince enough members of the house to pass it with a bare 2/3 majority, 119-56. Lincoln was assassinated on April 14 and the necessary number of states did not ratify it until December 6, 1865.
It takes ¾ of the states ratifying an amendment for that amendment to become part of the constitution. These are the states that made up the 27 out of the existing 36 states. 3 more states – Oregon, California and Florida, ratified the amendment that same month. Iowa and New Jersey followed in January, though New Jersey had originally rejected it outright on March 16, 1865. Mississippi, the final holdout, rejected it in 1865 because they were not being compensated for the value of their slaves. The state government didn’t submit the required documentation to ratify the amendment until February 7, 2013.
On its face, it seems there is much to celebrate about 1865. Slavery officially came to an end, both by Presidential Order and by Constitutional Amendment. But as with most things, I believe it is more complicated than that.
As Jelani Cobb points out in his excellent New Yorker piece entitled “Juneteenth and the Meaning of Freedom”, a full 30 months went by between the Emancipation Proclamation and the reading of General Order No. 3 on that June Day in Galveston. The enslaved men, women and children in Texas were kept in the dark about the proclamation, the end of the civil war, their ability to obtain freedom. Instead, the slavemasters kept them in a system that dehumanized them and extracted every ounce of unpaid labor possible from their bodies. These men, women and children continued to be treated as property, bought, sold, worked to the point of exhaustion and then to death. And then in the same breath they were told that “all slaves are free”, they are “advised to remain at their present homes and work for wages” – meaning, stay on the plantations and get your former owners to pay you. They are also warned that idleness won’t be tolerated.
This was an apt warning, because although the 13th Amendment is often thought of as the one that outlawed slavery, it is important to read it more closely. By the end of 1865, a citizen could no longer own another person the same way they could own furniture or livestock, that much is true. But the first section of the 13th Amendment states:
Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude EXCEPT AS A PUNISHMENT FOR A CRIME WHEREOF THE PARTY SHALL HAVE BEEN DULY CONVICTED, shall exist within the United States, or any place subject to their jurisdiction.
Except as a punishment for a crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted. In other words, if you are found guilty of a crime, you can be punished to unpaid labor. Suddenly, the new slave economy was found. Free blacks were arrested for petty charges such as loitering and given harsh sentences so that companies could lease groups of convicts as cheap labor. The more Black people, especially black men, who were arrested and convicted (although conviction was never a problem), the better it was for the economy and the bank accounts of the middle and upper class White business owners.
Cobb states “There’s a paradox inherent in the fact that emancipation is celebrated primarily among African-Americans, and that the celebration is rooted in a perception of slavery as something that happened to black people, rather than something that the country committed.” This reminds me of the ‘word game’ that Baratunde Thurston plays in his brilliant Ted talk “How to Deconstruct Racism, One Headline at a Time.” He goes through a series of headlines, such as this one – “White Woman Calls Police On 8 year old Black Girl Selling Water” and takes it down to its basic grammatical form - subject, action, target, activity. I highly recommend watching his talk because it is very interesting and well done. But what it made me think of is that how we use language defines how we see ourselves and our world. And sometimes, we need to be a little more precise and honest with our language in order to see a more precise and honest picture.
Reading stories about Juneteenth, I kept coming across phrases such as the ending of slavery in the United States and the emancipation of those who had been enslaved. These phrases are impersonal, banal. If we are ever going to truly begin to acknowledge the virulent systemic racism that runs through our society and institutions, we must begin using direct language, the active voice. We must come face to face with discomfort. We must not engage in whataboutisms and the pointing out exceptions to rules that distract from the fact that on August 20, 1619, the White Lion docked at Virgina’s Point Comfort and brought the first African slaves to these shores, beginning a human trade and a system of race based chattel slavery that built the physical and social foundations of what because the United States. Slavery and its descendants has continued for 400 years in this land. Now that Juneteenth has become mainstream, perhaps it is time for White folks, rather than only taking on the celebratory aspect of the holiday, to use this day as a prompt for deep study. Study of racism, of history, of stories of what it is to be black now and what it was to be black at different points in our history. We are gifted with brilliant black creators of books and documentaries to learn from. May we take this opportunity to learn, and may what we learn help us to become better people. May enough of us become better people to make a better society. And may us all work toward a society where everyone one day truly has the same chances to experience life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. And let us say, Amen.
On June 19, 1865, Major General Gordon Granger arrived in Galveston Texas, the last slave-owning holdout in the South ignoring Lincoln’s Emancipation Proclamation of the 1st of January 1863 and the Robert E Lee’s surrender on April 9, 1865. There, he delivered General Order Number 3:
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 at their present homes and work for wages. They are informed that they will not be allowed to collect at military posts; and they will not be supported in idleness either there or elsewhere.
Now the 13th Amendment passed the Senate with a 2/3 majority in April 1864, as the civil war was raging. It took until January 31, 1865 to convince enough members of the house to pass it with a bare 2/3 majority, 119-56. Lincoln was assassinated on April 14 and the necessary number of states did not ratify it until December 6, 1865.
It takes ¾ of the states ratifying an amendment for that amendment to become part of the constitution. These are the states that made up the 27 out of the existing 36 states. 3 more states – Oregon, California and Florida, ratified the amendment that same month. Iowa and New Jersey followed in January, though New Jersey had originally rejected it outright on March 16, 1865. Mississippi, the final holdout, rejected it in 1865 because they were not being compensated for the value of their slaves. The state government didn’t submit the required documentation to ratify the amendment until February 7, 2013.
On its face, it seems there is much to celebrate about 1865. Slavery officially came to an end, both by Presidential Order and by Constitutional Amendment. But as with most things, I believe it is more complicated than that.
As Jelani Cobb points out in his excellent New Yorker piece entitled “Juneteenth and the Meaning of Freedom”, a full 30 months went by between the Emancipation Proclamation and the reading of General Order No. 3 on that June Day in Galveston. The enslaved men, women and children in Texas were kept in the dark about the proclamation, the end of the civil war, their ability to obtain freedom. Instead, the slavemasters kept them in a system that dehumanized them and extracted every ounce of unpaid labor possible from their bodies. These men, women and children continued to be treated as property, bought, sold, worked to the point of exhaustion and then to death. And then in the same breath they were told that “all slaves are free”, they are “advised to remain at their present homes and work for wages” – meaning, stay on the plantations and get your former owners to pay you. They are also warned that idleness won’t be tolerated.
This was an apt warning, because although the 13th Amendment is often thought of as the one that outlawed slavery, it is important to read it more closely. By the end of 1865, a citizen could no longer own another person the same way they could own furniture or livestock, that much is true. But the first section of the 13th Amendment states:
Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude EXCEPT AS A PUNISHMENT FOR A CRIME WHEREOF THE PARTY SHALL HAVE BEEN DULY CONVICTED, shall exist within the United States, or any place subject to their jurisdiction.
Except as a punishment for a crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted. In other words, if you are found guilty of a crime, you can be punished to unpaid labor. Suddenly, the new slave economy was found. Free blacks were arrested for petty charges such as loitering and given harsh sentences so that companies could lease groups of convicts as cheap labor. The more Black people, especially black men, who were arrested and convicted (although conviction was never a problem), the better it was for the economy and the bank accounts of the middle and upper class White business owners.
Cobb states “There’s a paradox inherent in the fact that emancipation is celebrated primarily among African-Americans, and that the celebration is rooted in a perception of slavery as something that happened to black people, rather than something that the country committed.” This reminds me of the ‘word game’ that Baratunde Thurston plays in his brilliant Ted talk “How to Deconstruct Racism, One Headline at a Time.” He goes through a series of headlines, such as this one – “White Woman Calls Police On 8 year old Black Girl Selling Water” and takes it down to its basic grammatical form - subject, action, target, activity. I highly recommend watching his talk because it is very interesting and well done. But what it made me think of is that how we use language defines how we see ourselves and our world. And sometimes, we need to be a little more precise and honest with our language in order to see a more precise and honest picture.
Reading stories about Juneteenth, I kept coming across phrases such as the ending of slavery in the United States and the emancipation of those who had been enslaved. These phrases are impersonal, banal. If we are ever going to truly begin to acknowledge the virulent systemic racism that runs through our society and institutions, we must begin using direct language, the active voice. We must come face to face with discomfort. We must not engage in whataboutisms and the pointing out exceptions to rules that distract from the fact that on August 20, 1619, the White Lion docked at Virgina’s Point Comfort and brought the first African slaves to these shores, beginning a human trade and a system of race based chattel slavery that built the physical and social foundations of what because the United States. Slavery and its descendants has continued for 400 years in this land. Now that Juneteenth has become mainstream, perhaps it is time for White folks, rather than only taking on the celebratory aspect of the holiday, to use this day as a prompt for deep study. Study of racism, of history, of stories of what it is to be black now and what it was to be black at different points in our history. We are gifted with brilliant black creators of books and documentaries to learn from. May we take this opportunity to learn, and may what we learn help us to become better people. May enough of us become better people to make a better society. And may us all work toward a society where everyone one day truly has the same chances to experience life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. And let us say, Amen.