Juneteenth: Time For Dallasites To Pick Society's Next Direction

DALLAS, TX —Saturday is Juneteenth. How will you spend it?

For the first time ever, Dallasites will be able to march to commemorate the day when slaves in Texas learned they'd actually been free for two and a half years already.

It comes the summer after Black Lives Matter upended American society in the middle of a pandemic after the murder of George Floyd in Minneapolis — a moment of reckoning when people of every race, creed and color stood up to say: Enough.

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Saturday's Juneteenth also arrives as the first one to be federally recognized as a holiday.

And it dawns just as the Texas legislature is about to make voting as difficult as is legally possible, largely at the expense of people of color, while at the same time making it easier than ever to walk the streets packing a deadly weapon.

Only last month, the legislature stripped language copied and pasted right out of Jim Crow-era law into the new proposal. In the tweet below, you can watch Democratic Rep. Rafael Anchía school Republican Rep. Briscoe Cain about the bill's language.

Anchía asks, "What was your motivation for using that term ‘purity at the ballot box’?”

Cain has the look of a deer caught in the headlights as Anchía continues. “Did you look at the history before using that word?”

“No, no… I’m not familiar with… Article 6,” says Cain.

“Well, you may have missed it then,” responds Anchía. “And this would have been very obvious, I think, to anybody who looked at that language. That provision was drafted specifically to disenfranchise black people, black voters, following the Civil War. Did you know that?”

“No, that’s, I’m sorry to hear that," is all Cain can muster.

The exchange should be what pops up any time a school kid Googles "white privilege."

So, sure, it's gratifying, even great, to have Juneteenth declared a national federal holiday. But it's easy to be distracted and dazzled by a pretty bauble like a paid day off and a parade (very intentionally declared not a protest by organizer Darryl Blair, the editor/publisher of Elite News.

“It’s a march in peace, not a march in protest,” Blair told The Dallas Morning News. “It’s a march in celebration, not a march in conflict. It’s a march that culminates in engagement, encouragement, enlightenment, education and entertainment.”

Maybe it should be. LGBTQ+ organizers always stress that their Pride observances are not parades. They are always marches. They are always protests. Because, as Dr. King once said, "No one is free until we are all free."

But this is the summer after COVID-19 collectively knocked the wind out of America. It's the summer after some associated with BLM and some who wished to have BLM blamed torched and looted, either out of frustration, or because they could.

It is the first summer since the first president ever to claim he was cheated out of an election told the people who assaulted D.C. police, trashed the Capitol, killed an officer and threatened to lynch his own Vice President that he loved them after their rampage.

People are exhausted from that, exhilarated to be out among family, friends and neighbors again.

Perhaps it's okay to just take a deep breath, and simply enjoy the fruits of what has been accomplished in the name of equity and justice. And be thankful for the medical miracle that society is on the mend.

Spend the day with those you cherish. Tell the stories you know about Juneteenth and General Order No. 3, in which U.S. Maj. Gen. Gordon Granger informed the people of Texas that all enslaved people were finally free. That modest little document now sits in the National Archives.

But also take a moment to consider the people who represent Texas within and outside the Lone Star State — the ones who are elected to represent all the people, not just their constituents.

How will Greg Abbott, Dan Patrick, Ted Cruz, John Cornyn, Louie Gohmert and Briscoe Cain observe Juneteenth? Would any of them feel welcome in Saturday's march? Would any of them be welcome?

And, come Monday, how quickly will they be back about the business of making sure their power remains in their hands?

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