[music] >> Welcome to Democracy Now, democracynow.org, the war and peace report. I’m Amy Goodman. Today, [snorts] a Democracy Now special on this, the newly created Juneteenth federal holiday, which marks the end of slavery in the United States. The Juneteenth commemoration dates back to the last days of the Civil War, when Union soldiers landed in Galveston, Texas.
It was June 19th, 1865, with news that the war had ended and enslaved people learned they were freed. It was 2 and 1/2 years after President Lincoln signed the Emancipation Proclamation. In 2021, President Biden signed legislation to make Juneteenth the first new federal holiday since Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Day.
The day after Biden signed the legislation, I spoke to the writer and poet Clint Smith, author of How the Word Is Passed, a reckoning with the history of slavery across America. I began by asking him about traveling to Galveston, Texas, and his feelings on Juneteenth becoming a federal holiday. >> As you mentioned, I went to Galveston, Texas. I was I’ve been writing this book for 4 years, and I went 2 years ago, and it was marking the 40th anniversary when Texas had made Juneteenth a state holiday, and it was the Al Edwards Prayer Breakfast. The late Al Edwards Sr.
is the state legislator, a black state legislator, who made possible and advocated for the legislation that turned Juneteenth into a holiday, a state holiday in Texas. And so, I went in part because I wanted to spend time with people who were the actual descendants of those who had been freed by Maj. Gen. Gordon Granger’s General Order No. 3.
And it was a really remarkable moment because I was in this place, on this island, on this land, with people for whom Juneteenth was not an abstraction. It was not a performance. It was not merely a symbol. It was It was part of their tradition. It was part of their lineage.
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