Good evening!
Being with you tonight is nothing less than a privilege and honor. Juneteenth is such a special day in American history. From 1619 when the 1st Africans arrived on the shores of Lynchburg, VA until January 1, 1863, Africans were declared slaves, beings who were considered 3/5 a human being whose destiny was to work brutal hours and jobs without pay for life. They were owned by those who purchased them and could be sold to another who purchased them.
Some have said to me, “What was SO wrong or bad with slavery? Wasn’t there slavery in the Bible and other cultures?” While there was slavery in the Bible and other parts of the world, one could only be a slave for 7 years and most times you were paying back a debt you owed or paying the penalty for a crime committed.
I wish we had not called what happened to Africans in America slavery, because it was not traditional slavery. It was legalized terrorism. Not only was the slave owned by their master, but your children were automatically slaves, as well as their children. This institution was evil to the core, meant to torcher the slave physically, emotionally, mentally, and spiritually into submission, many times just shy of their lives.
While President Lincoln believed in and supported slavery, I believe he was sent by God to release these oppressed human beings, made in his image, from the bonds of slavery. President Lincoln valued more an intact Union than the financial benefits of slavery which led him to declare a Civil War. From April 12, 1861 to April 9, 1865 America fought its bloodiest war. The North against the South.
In the middle of this war, President Lincoln penned the words, “I do order and declare that all persons held as slaves, are, and henceforth shall be free” on January 1, 1863, known as the Emancipation Proclamation. Africans who had been slaves in the South, owned by another human being for almost 250 years, were now free!!
Guess what? Many southern slaves did not know about this declaration. Sadly, they did not know for 2 ½ years. On June 19, 1865 in Galveston, TX Union army general Gordon Granger announces federal orders that all slaves in Texas were now free--known now as Juneteenth! This was the last group of slaves in the South to learn of their freedom. There are theories of how this happened. Suffice it to say, June 19, 1865 was the date that ALL slaves in the South knew they were free. Side note: The 13th Amendment to the Constitution freed ALL slaves, no matter where they were in the US on January 31, 1865.
Governed from a federal level, newly freed slaves entered in what we know to be the Reconstruction Period—1865 to 1877. For the first time in their lives, Blacks were equal with whites. We could own land, vote, work in government by winning elections, own a business, educate our children, earn money and it was all legal. After President Lincoln was assassinated on April 15, 1865, VP Andrew Johnson became President. He established the Reconstruction Act that had two goals: reintegrate Southern states from the Confederacy and integrate 4 million newly-freed slaves into the US.
Unfortunately, within a decade groups like the Ku Klux Klan along with President Johnson would reverse the change brought by Reconstruction in a violent backlash that restored white supremacy in the South. While slave owners received reparations for the loss they incurred with slavery ending, Blacks were promised 40 acres and a mule to get them started and back on their feet. The White slave owners received payment for their losses, but Blacks did not. We never received payment for our losses.
How incredibly devastating must it have been to experience the freedom they knew in their souls to be right and the freedom their ancestors would talk about in Africa only to have it taken away in such a short amount of time—12 years! Now what? More legalized oppression. While the 13th Amendment freed all slaves, there was an exception clause—unless you were a criminal. This exception not only was exploited, but was applied to these newly freed slaves, especially Black men.
The South was hit hard once the lucrative slave (and cotton) industry was abolished and there was a need for labor to work the fields, etc. The solution—criminalize practically anything a Black person did and place them in jail or prison. So, these Black Americans could not own land, vote, become educated, run for office, own their own business any longer. All of these things were now illegal. This era became known as the Jim Crow Era and it lasted almost 100 years (post Reconstruction [1877] to 1968) .
Shortly after Reconstruction, state and local statutes/laws legalized racial segregation. If African Americans resisted Jim Crow laws, they could be arrested, fined, jailed, experience violence and even murdered. Black Codes were established solely to control where a Black person traveled and worked and how much they made on their job. Former Confederate soldiers worked as police and judges, making it difficult for African Americans to win court cases and ensuring African Americans were subject to black codes.
These codes worked in conjunction with the penal system. Black offenders typically received longer sentences than their white equal and because of the grueling work, often did not live out their entire sentence before dying. Violence was on the rise against African Americans and Presidents, local governments and even the Church, did very little to combat this terror. Black schools were vandalized and destroyed, and black citizens were attacked, tortured and lynched in the middle of the night. Families were attacked and forced off their land across the South. The KKK was the ring leader in orchestrating this terror while occupying the highest levels of government to the lowest local positions (like a community watch individual).
One statute or law during the Jim Crow Era was redlining. We all know when buying a house, zip code is everything as it relates to property values growing. Well, there were laws that kept Blacks from buying homes in certain zip codes. We could only buy in a certain area. Many times streets were not kept up, property values grew slowly and policing was either non-existent or harassing. My parents were born in 1943 and 1947. They both lived through Jim Crow and have some stories to tell.
Thankfully, their children were born after the Civil Rights Act and Voting Rights Act of ’64 and ’65. I, along with my siblings, don’t know what it feels like to not be able to walk through the front door of any restaurant or go to school and learn no matter where we went to school, or vote in local, state and federal elections, attend college if we wanted, own a business, or travel from state to state without being stopped and asked for our papers.
Have we experienced discrimination based on the color of our skin? Yes, all of my siblings have. But now we can sue or write up a complaint against a business or college or industry or boss if proven to be discriminatory, where this was not an option prior to the Civil Rights Act of 1964. Have we come a long way since June 19, 1865 when all slaves in the south knew they were free? Yes, we have. African Americans can vote, own land, own homes in neighborhoods where our property values steadily grow over the years, own a business, go to college, work in leadership roles, serve in government, marry interracially, etc.
We’ve come a long way for sure. However, with the recent deaths of George Floyd. Breonna Taylor and Ahmaud Aubrey and the encounter in the flower garden of a white woman and a black male in NYC, we all know there is something wrong systemically, especially with the justice system, for these occurrences to happen the way they did, let alone the hundreds we don’t know about because no one captured it on film. In real time and full color, we witnessed a police officer murder a black man on the streets in the middle of the day while being videotaped. We also witnessed a white woman use her whiteness as a weapon to bring harm to another person. And neither one feared negative consequences for their actions.
America is changing ethnically and there are some who do not want this to occur. They are trying all kinds of ways to keep this inevitable occurrence from happening, to no avail. I know God is up to something good and I believe it is going to be a painful lesson for the Church. God has given the Church in America over 400 years to denounce the evils of not just slavery, but the aftermath of terror brought upon African Americans during Reconstruction, Jim Crow and Segregation Eras by White Americans. We have yet to do this. Do I believe that reckoning is coming and coming soon? Yes, I do.
All the Lord wants us to do is to confess the wrongs, not only past, but present and ask Him to help us turn from the evil of racism (or dehumanization) and trust Him to enable us to truly love the way He intended us to love one another. I know He can do this in us. The question remains. Do we want Him to do this in us? Racism has benefitted White Americans, to include Christians, for centuries. Are we ready to let go of those benefits for the sake of righteousness? Fighting against systemic racism, or dehumanization, is right and good, and it will be costly. The question at the end of the day is—are we ready to pay the cost to dismantle this evil or will we wait for the Lord to humble us?
My prayer is we will choose to humble ourselves and pursue righteousness no matter the cost!
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