Juneteenth In Texas

In this episode, we trace the Texas origins of Juneteenth from Galveston to a holiday now recognized across the United States and beyond. Juneteenth didn’t become powerful because the paperwork was poetic. It became powerful because people made it a public declaration that freedom had to mean something real. 

We walk through the moment General Gordon Granger issues General Order No. 3 on June 19, 1865 and we read it the way historians do, line by line. We look at how history opens the door to the bigger story: the uncertain early days of Reconstruction, the delayed enforcement of freedom, and why emancipation on paper is not the same thing as full citizenship in practice. 

Subscribe for more Texas history beyond the Alamo, share this with a friend who’s curious about Juneteenth, and leave a review if the episode helps you see the holiday differently. How are you choosing to recognize June 19 this year?

Read Gen. Granger's General Order #3 

Transcript

Disclaimer And Show Welcome

SPEAKER_01 0:00

This podcast is not sponsored by us and does not reflect the views of the institutions that employ us. It is solely our thoughts and ideas based upon our professional training and study of the past.

SPEAKER_00 0:14

Welcome to Talking Texas History, the podcast that explores Texas history before and beyond the Alamo. Not only will we talk Texas history, we'll visit with folks who teach it, write it, support it, and with some who've made it. And of course, all of us who live it and love it. Welcome to another edition of Talking Texas History. I'm Gene Preuce. I'm Scott

Why Juneteenth Still Sparks Debate

SPEAKER_00 0:44

Sosby.

SPEAKER_01 0:44

Gene, we're nearing Juneteenth holiday here. And so, right, we need to do something on Juneteenth. What do you think?

SPEAKER_00 0:52

Well, you know, that's it's an interesting topic, and it's interesting that you brought that up because uh, yeah, we're we're in June. It's uh people start thinking about Juneteenth. This is a holiday started here in Texas. It's fascinating because it's it's now international, right? It's people all over the world celebrate Juneteenth. And I I just find that interesting and and amazing that you know, so some little holiday that started here in Texas, because we're such a little place, right? Could could have international repercussions um a couple hundred years later.

SPEAKER_01 1:31

I know. And I also love how we come on here with our introduction and we give the impression, you know, we just log on here and just start brainstorming to get a topic and say, hey, let's talk on that, right? Like we don't do any planning whatsoever, which may be true for all everybody now. Well, we really winging this whole thing, I just yes, you're right. Of all the things that have come out of Texas, this is perhaps, and I don't think we think about this, the most universal of all, you know, uh as far as something that everybody in the you know, many parts of the world, but it particularly all over the United States now knows exactly what that is from something that's starting in Texas. How many other things are like that? I mean, what uh cowboys? Is that what it is? I don't know. Well, the cattle drive, the cattle drive job, I guess, you know, other than that. But I mean, this is so other words, to paraphrase Joe Biden a long time ago, this is a big friggin' deal, but I don't know that we people uh realize how it started, how it spread, and then what implications it has today, and particularly why, and this is something that I think we should really get into, why it is so important to African Americans that this is acknowledged and that this is a holiday. I think that's one of the big things. I mean, you hear people all the time, well, why don't we have to have a Juneteenth holiday? I don't understand, you know, and and that when the opposition to making it was that, and that's a very, of course, white privileged statement to make. And you say, Oh, well, you know, I don't I don't get it. Well, of course you don't get it because you don't understand the actual symbolic importance of something like Juneteenth.

SPEAKER_00 3:15

Well, I mean, this is this is a problem we have with with a lot of history, right? And and some people think, well, just the history that I know is all that's important. No, history for for one thing, for one thing, look, you know, people always say, What did you learn uh as PhD? I think the big lesson that we learned, and and if nowhere else and when we took our our comprehensive exams, the very last exams, you know, it was uh a week's worth of testing, and then you uh you had to write, we wrote and wrote and wrote and wrote, and then we had to do oral defenses of that. And um one of the things that it struck home to me was that the whole point of it was to tell us to show us that we didn't know everything.

SPEAKER_01 4:06

You know, that's a good point. I I guess I didn't think about that way. I obviously learned that lesson very well because I still don't know everything.

SPEAKER_00 4:15

I don't even know that I I know anything. That's right. Um in fact, other people have have backed me up on that. Um, but but I think that the thing is that um you you know you you you realize that you don't know it all, that you that you know a lot about a little bit, but you know where to go for the answers. Um and I think that was that was the real takeaway, the big picture takeaway I got from that. And and that there's so much history out there, right? Is that all we're doing, all we're ever doing is scratching the surface, and you can always go further and deeper and learn more.

SPEAKER_01 4:55

Yeah, well, exactly. And that's why something like Juneteenth is worth exploring and why it's worth looking into the whole entire, not just okay, there's a holiday that honors this, and the, you know, we're gonna talk about General Granger's order and this, but the background to it and why it is so significant to the African-American experience and then also to the American experience.

July 4th Through Enslaved Eyes

SPEAKER_01 5:21

You know, I hearken back to even before it started talking about being a national holiday, even today when it's quoted, we're coming up on July 4th. And, you know, very often uh when we're coming up on July 4th, and many people remind people of Frederick Douglass's uh famous oration he spoke on uh July 5th uh at the Rochester when he was invited by the Rochester Ladies Anti-Slavery Society. Uh so the day after the July 4th, so holiday. So everything, you know, people are thinking this, and of course, this was in the 1850s, uh, and so slavery was still happening. And Douglass's famous core question on that is what to the Amer uh American slave is your July 4th? Right. And he answered a day that reveals to him more than the other days in the year the gross injustice and cruelty to which he is the constant victim. Douglas was talking about how hypocritical it was, really, to celebrate independence when there were millions of people not uh independent because they were they were enslaved on this. And that was his and and many people, you know, well, that's that's you know, he's you know, he's not being patriotic, he's not taking notice of of uh of the U.S.'s birth and you know, everything like that. But to some Frederick Douglass and the people of color at that time, why would they celebrate Independence Day? I mean, that's what we call it, Independence Day. They definitely weren't independent on this. And that goes to, and it's the reason why I bring that up, is why many uh African-Americans and all Americans began to say we need a holiday that specifically calls attention to uh this institution and when it ended in this nation to begin to move forward to new uh experiences after that. And thus that's the Juneteenth holiday. And so that's what many people don't understand, I think, when they say, why do we need a holiday uh like this when we aren't having independence days, which is the argument when many people are against uh I heard uh in Congress and stuff before they made the it became a n it became a federal law in 2021, I believe, uh is when uh Joe Biden uh signed the legislation that made that. Why do we need that holiday? And many people, to be fair, on the right side of politics are the ones who tended to argue that we don't need to have a holiday. Well, you call up things like this, and that's why we do need to have a holiday. And I I I think it's not malintent, it's not malevolent, it's ignorance when somebody says that we don't think there should be a holiday uh that commemorates this.

SPEAKER_00 8:06

Well, and it's like, you know, one of the things that every time a student tells me this, it always makes me laugh. And I've had a lot of students tell me this is you know, I'll be teaching something and they go, Well, you know, raise their hand. Well, I I've never heard of that before. And I was like, Well, okay. Um, you know, that's why you're that's why you're in college, that's why you're paying me the money uh is to teach you things, right? Or that's not how I heard it. But but but it's almost like like that there's a limited body of information, and I already know all that there is to know, and everything else is either irrelevant or you know, that if I've never, and I don't, I don't, I actually I don't know where that comes from, but that's how it sounds. And um and and and it's just is I always I always kind of want to chuckle to myself when somebody says that to me. Um because the the the thing about why we need Women's History Month or African American History Month or Asian Pacific Islanders Um History Month or Mexican American History Month is because history is so there's so much history to know, right? We can't know everything about the past. Um, and so to highlight a little bit, and you know, you were talking about Frederick Douglass's speech. Frederick Douglass didn't say that speech, well, you know, um it wasn't Independence Day for us, so we're out of here. We didn't leave. You know, Langston Hughes had this great poem called Let America Be America Again. Um, and he said, you know, America, there were times when America wasn't America to me. Um, and you know, Barbara Jordan from Houston uh once uh got up in in uh whenever they were uh uh during the the uh Watergate trials and said, Um, you know, when the Constitution was written, my people weren't included in it. But that doesn't mean that they wanted to leave. They weren't saying let's throw it all away. What they said is that this is our country now. We are a part of it, and we have to realize that there's a lot, a lot of people have a history here, and it means a lot to them. And so one of the things we try to do, I try to do, and I know you try to do this, is try to incorporate different histories and and and show people why history is important. And I think that's that's the job of all instructors.

SPEAKER_01 10:45

That's right, overcoming the tide of ignorance. Is that I've heard that said before, uh, that's a tough thing to do. But you're right, and you're absolutely right, and that's one reason why I think this holiday is so important, yeah, is because I think you're talking about this, and you're right. Frederick Douglass, Barbara Jordan, everybody that's made uh to Langston Hughes uh written poems, and you think of the many different uh Martin Luther King Jr. and his speeches and things, what they're really doing is imploring all Americans is look, you established a nation with these ideals, these ideals of uh uh equality under the law, these ideas of uh uh of democracy and things. Let's live up to those principles, let's extend them to everybody. And that's one reason when they say that's why I am I know why. So it's it's not right for me to say I don't understand. I know why they do, but it exacerbates me uh when people take offense at calling uh attention to Douglas or Hughes or Jordan or to Juneteenth. Why do they take such offense to it? Why does that bother them so much? That's that that is that that is the that's the I throw my hands up and I don't know how to argue with that. Because I I it's completely foreign to me, I suppose. So I think, Jesus, why don't you talk us through about when the holiday was, why it got started, and then we can go from there. How about that?

SPEAKER_00 12:13

All right.

The Texas Moment Juneteenth Begins

SPEAKER_00 12:14

So the closing days of the Civil War, and uh here in Texas, um, Texas was part of the Confederacy, and so uh as the Civil War was winding down, um certainly people wondered what was gonna happen. There was a lot of fear in the Houston-Galveston area um with what was gonna happen. And and uh the the Union Army sailed into Galveston and established uh their headquarters uh in Galveston. Uh General Gordon Granger from the U.S. Army was brought in, and he was going to be in control of this district. And um so so let's let's let's do the uh the legend of Juneteenth. So um June 19th, Gordon Granger uh comes up with general order number three. And it's a it's a it's a short order, it's it's not a very long thing. And in fact, it it it I think a lot of times whenever we start talking about Juneteenth, and uh I I know that I read it to students and and uh I have the document for students, and they look at it and they say, is that is that it because uh I think we we tend to think that um because it has such a history, we expect it to be a profound a profound document, but really it's very short. So I'm gonna read it. General order number three. The people 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 become that between employer and hired labor. The freed 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 that they will not be supported in idleness either there or elsewhere.

Reading Granger’s Order Closely

SPEAKER_01 14:40

Which listen, this is what we do. We parse documents. And I always have thought the parsing of this document is extremely illuminating. So certainly what Granger's doing is referring to the Emancipation Proclamation uh that uh was done for and Texas was included in that because it was directed towards the Confederate States, that slavery is thus in these states ended on this. It's not though. What is interesting is what Granger says after he says that to me always, when he documents, and it tells somewhat what the intentions of the United States was at the time. Their intentions were the slaves would continue doing what they were doing, they would continue to be on plantations, they would continue to work, they were just gonna get paid for it at that point. And he's basically telling them don't come hanging out here amongst the Union Army. So you can say that's to keep from a crowd doing whatever. And he says, not in idleness. Essentially, he says, You people need to still work, yeah, and we're not gonna be responsible for you. You're now responsible for your own lives, is what he's saying. So while it is a declaration of slavery over with, is it a declaration of freedom? And considering what we know what happened afterwards, maybe it wasn't.

SPEAKER_00 16:07

Well, I think, I mean, and and and if we look at the history of Reconstruction, and you know, that was one of my most interesting one of the one of the areas and eras that most interested me in history was is how did we make this work? How do we make the proclamation uh uh of emancipation? How did we make it work? I mean, look, even if we look at the history, um, the emancipation proclamation you know, the emancipation proclamation, I often tell students did very little. I mean, so so Lincoln issues the emancipation proclamation when the nation was divided. And he says, who does this apply to? The states in rebellion. Not to the states that were part of the United States, but to the states that had left. So, what authority did he really have there? None of that.

SPEAKER_01 17:00

Exactly. And remember, the 13th Amendment, while it has ratified by Congress in the end of January 1865, it doesn't finally get ratified by all the states until December of 1865. So when Granger's making this uh proclamation, the 13th Amendment has not been passed yet. Right. The official outlawing of slavery to do this. And it all and you're right, it goes, I mean, really and truly, and remember, Granger's doing this in June. Lincoln's already been assassinated uh by that time. And John Andrew Johnson is in charge, Congress is in a state of turmoil. We don't really know what Reconstruction is going to look like at that point. We don't know what shape it's going to take at that point. And so he's making this statement while we're, you know, the United States government's still trying to figure out what are we going to do about all of this.

SPEAKER_00 17:56

So you're bringing up a very good point, and the point that I would also suggest is that Johnson wasn't keen on emancipating uh proclamation. Right? I mean, in fact, that you know, this is one of the reasons why he gets impeached. Uh is because he is not. I mean, he he didn't he didn't like plantation owners, right? He had an animus toward wealthy planters.

SPEAKER_01 18:24

Absolutely. And um and an equal, if not more animus, towards enslaved people in people in African Americas.

SPEAKER_00 18:34

Yes, yes. And and that's something we we tend to overlook, we don't talk about in history. Is is that there was a lot I mean, well, and and and look, let's be honest. I mean, in the in the American South and and even in the North, right? Northerners weren't 100% behind the Civil War as a means of ending slavery. Um we have to to put our put our feet into the shoes of people in the mid-1800s and realize that they did not believe, for the most part, in social equality. Um, and the abolitionists of the abolitionists, not all of the abolitionists believed in social equality. For those that did, they were few. And they stood out. Now, we tend we tend in our history to celebrate them and say, oh, well, there's all abolitionists. No, they didn't.

SPEAKER_01 19:34

No. And if they did, and if there was a majority of this, we wouldn't have to go through the hundred years of Jim Crow and the oppression at that point, and then have a civil rights movement, and we wouldn't still have this. I mean, anybody that thinks racism has been raced is crazy. Uh, I mean, they're absolutely crazy on doing this. So, so the holiday, if we parse it down, I think we can say that it was a to make this, I guess my point is to make this like there was this huge rejoicing, big thing. Hey, the Great Oppression's over with, let's go for it. That didn't happen. That did not happen on June 19, 1865. However, it did turn into a holiday of celebration, didn't it, Jake?

From Jubilee Day To National Tradition

SPEAKER_00 20:16

It it did. And so within a few within just a couple of years, I believe, uh the African-American community here in Texas were celebrating Juneteenth, right? They they did see this as the time when uh it was made official, and this is true, right? And it was officially became the policy of the government of Texas one year afterwards.

SPEAKER_01 20:39

Slavery was ended. Yeah, one year afterwards was uh on June 19th, 1866, Jubilee Day took place. In Galveston, it was gas and and uh in around areas. Again, we must point out, I mean, even after June 19th, if in some areas of Texas, as much as all the way into 1867, there were still people enslaved because they didn't get the word uh and had not uh known that slavery was over with, and they continue to work this. But the formerly enslaved people of Texas began to look at this like this is something to be celebrated. Because they picked out this is this day. I think we we don't understand now people who were enslaved under that horrible system for you know to sub to for you know well for for centuries, their one complete dream, what they prayed for, what they wished for every day, was that it ended, that it was over with. And generation after generation after generation, that was the number one goal of their life. And so when it was over with, even if things weren't exactly great, it was a call. For celebration with them. This horrible, oppressive institution is over with. It's done. And that's that became the holiday of Juneteenth, is what happened. And it began in Texas, and it was a Texas holiday for a number of years. But then in the late 1800s, early 1900s, we began this big diaspora, even before this, to some extent. Remember, Texas was the home of a lot of refugee slaves who uh were sent here during the Civil War. And then when the Civil War was over, they left and left Texas to look for their families that were other places. Some people came to Texas to look for their families. But that this diaspora first began to spread it mostly throughout the South. And it was a strictly African American holiday that happened. But then when you get to the World War I years and what is often known as the Great Migration, we have another diaspora where these uh particular mostly Southern African Americans spread throughout the nation. And they go to places in the in the north and the west. They take this holiday with them. And it becomes a holiday that specifically centers on we're celebrating when our ancestors, our grandfathers and grandmothers, and great-grandfathers and great-grandmothers were the the their enslaved status is over with. It's done. And that leads it to become part of the civil rights movement. Martin Luther King Jr. often pointed to June 19th as an important day. He did it in speeches and everything. And very importantly, uh, you know, when he was assassinated in Memphis in April of 1968, he was there to lead a strike of sanitation workers uh against that. And that is a bigger campaign. Martin Luther King Jr.'s his later before assassination, his his message had shifted to economic civil rights and trying to find economic freedom for African Americans who are still oppressed economically. And that is what he begins to hurge for. And after his assassination, we see the uh the Poor People's March organized. Yeah. Uh the Solidarity Day. When did that take place? June 19th, 1968. 50,000 people gathered at the Lincoln Memorial uh to actually call for economic civil rights. And to begin to do, and so it becomes a day in which African Americans point to as, and this is their vo to some extent, this is their voice, and this is what their independence guy. This is their July 4th. This is when they start to be given at least the uh promise of opportunity to actually share in American freedom.

SPEAKER_00 24:45

And and you know, Scott, is isn't that really the point of it all? And I'm gonna circle back around. And again, like people think we just sit up here uh, you know, just uh talking out the top of our head or or lower. Well, we are, but and we are, but but let me let me bring this back to where we're talking about, you know, King and Langston Hughes and uh Frederick Douglass and some of the things that they said.

Juneteenth As A National North Star

SPEAKER_00 25:12

Here's what I see as the importance of Juneteenth. It it isn't necessarily what Juneteenth did, what that proclamation Gordon Granger read did. It's what it stood for. It like the other United States documents, right? Our Constitution, our Declaration of Independence, all of those, the the first nation in the world to actually set down ideals that the nation was going to follow. And here again, in general order number three, the second sentence, 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 of employer and hired labor. That sentence, right, is at one time we were unequal people in the United States, now absolute equality. It may not have happened that day, or whenever those words were written down, but it certainly becomes the the uh the beacon to which um ships come into port, right? It becomes the guide star of how we're going to run our nation. And we may not have gotten there yet, but it becomes the goal. And you know, just like in the in in the Constitution, just like in the Declaration of Independence, you can say, well, some of those things, you know, all people are created equal, you know, endowed by their creator with certain inalienable rights. Well, maybe we haven't reached them all yet, but we have that goal, and that sets us apart. And I, you know, we can talk about exceptionalism, Texas exceptionalism, texceptionalism, as Ty Cashin would say, or American exceptionalism, sure, that exists. But but but there is a truth in that in our history, we have said this is what our nation is going to be, these are the values we hold, and and we and we try to achieve them.

SPEAKER_01 27:34

Yeah, I think, and I think you're exactly right. In classes, I mean certainly. I would be one of the first to argue that we are not a perfect nation, that we have subverted intentionally our values and our ideas and our systems of equality. We still do, we still do not uh function as a place of equality. There is so many equality gaps in this nation, be it wealth, be it social status, be it racial status, uh educational status, we can just go on and on and on on to these in these gaps as a nation. However, all of that said, which is exactly accurate, this is a nation. Only one at the time it was founded on an ideal, on an ideal that all men are created equal, uh, and that there we won't have these gaps or whatever, and we'll work to bring them together, and that everybody has the right of self-determination. That means something. It means that we, as we just said, we may not be reaching them, but you know what? We have that as an idea to reach for. You call it a beacon. I would call it the you know, the the stars in the sky that you can reach for, and you know, you we can't keep striving to that height. Juneteenth, as a holiday, brings this whole race of people who are brought to this country to be enslaved as labor and an oppressive system in part of the United States. It says you now can be a part of this. You can now be part of this striving, you're not legally oppressed anymore. And so that's why it's important. That's why yes, it's a holiday that celebrates something that happens strictly to people of African descent, but it's still an American holiday that celebrates American ideals. And to me, it's just as important as Independence Day, it's just as important as July the 4th. They are co-equals, and maybe, maybe one day we'll celebrate them both as equally as each other.

SPEAKER_00 29:44

Well, and I think that's you know, that is the the the secret of what has made the United States uh and and all the states work, is that um we people have come here from all different stations, all different walks. They've, you know, as we like to say, we're a nation of immigrants, right? People have come here, whether they be from Germany or the nations that were Germany, the city states that were Germany, um, uh, you know, from Asia, from uh South America, from wherever. And we have said to them, you're now an American, right? Is that we have adopted you. We don't care what your background is, you're now an American. And you know, I grew up in New Braunfels. In New Braunfels, every year we celebrate uh uh our German heritage. And even people who who aren't German celebrate. Put on the leaderhosen and drink beer, right? That's right. Drink beer, eat some sausage, and wear a later hosen. And that's that's fantastic. Um, and if we can do that uh as German Americans, and we said you're now an American. You can celebrate your heritage, you can celebrate your background, but you're also part of us. And we've done that to here in Texas, to checks, to polls, to uh people from Vietnam, to people from China and Japan, uh, and for African Americans too, we say, yes, you you came here and you weren't free, but now you are, and now you have absolute equality of personal rights and rights of property. You're now an American.

SPEAKER_01 31:32

I think that's something. In fact, if I'd asked Gene Price, what do you know about Juneteenth? Maybe that's the best summing up that we could have come up with as we

Go Celebrate Juneteenth Near You

SPEAKER_01 31:42

come. So, folks, it's an American holiday that we should all celebrate. So, June 19th, uh, if you have a Juneteenth celebration that's near you, go to it. Go see what it's all about. If you've never been to one, you will be you'll be surprised because they are a lot of fun. I guarantee you. Absolutely. All right, Gene. We're we we we've got another one in the book. So every time we can finish one of these, we better just count that as an accomplishment.

SPEAKER_00 32:08

I absolutely. I think it's an accomplishment just waking up every day. Exactly. Sometimes I don't. All right, Scott.

SPEAKER_01 32:16

Thanks.

SPEAKER_00 32:17

Have a great day. Thanks.