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      I’m happy Juneteenth is a federal holiday. But don’t let it be whitewashed | Akin Olla

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      On 17 June, Joe Biden signed a bill turning Juneteenth, 19 June, into a federal holiday. Juneteenth, a celebration of the emancipation of enslaved Black people after the formal end of the US civil war, began in Texas in 1866 and has long been observed by many Black Americans.The US government’s belated decision to establish Juneteenth as a federal holiday is a testament to the impact of the current iteration of the perpetual movement for Black American liberation. Unfortunately, it may also be another step in the process to water down symbols of liberation: treating the brutalities of racism as a crime of the past instead of an ongoing project which both major political parties have helped helm. We should celebrate Juneteenth, while resisting attempts to co-opt its meaning and render it empty ceremony.Juneteenth, also known as Jubilee Day and Emancipation Day, is already a highly misunderstood holiday. It is often, understandably, confused with Abraham Lincoln’s issuing of the Emancipation Proclamation, which declared the freedom of any enslaved Black people within the rebellious Confederate states. The proclamation was made official in 1863, at the height of the civil war, and explicitly established the war as one to end slavery. Enslaved Black people had long begun their own uprisings and escapes in the midst of the war, but the proclamation gave legal protections to the new freedmen. After Lincoln’s announcement, over 200,000 formerly enslaved people joined the Union army, playing crucial roles in the defeat of the main Confederate army on 9 April 1865. Despite the north’s burgeoning victory and the Emancipation Proclamation, slavery in the United States was far from over, and slave states that remained part of the Union did not have to acknowledge the humanity of their enslaved population.The remaining armies of the Confederacy and small rebel guerrilla groups continued to fight well after the loss of the Confederate capital and Gen Robert E Lee’s surrender in April. Slave-owning whites in fallen Confederate states fled west to Texas, bringing with them over 100,000 enslaved Black people in the process. It took the arrival of the Union army to begin the end of slavery in Texas. On 19 June 1865, Maj Gen Gordon Granger declared, “The people of Texas are informed that, in accordance with a proclamation from the executive of the United States, all slaves are free.” While there have been many other dates for the holiday originally called Emancipation Day, 19 June became the dominant day of celebration.Despite Granger’s announcement, white slave owners fought to keep people in bondage, even killing Black people who fled for their freedom. Freedom had been declared in words, but it would take the military might of the Union army to enforce. This speaks volumes to how deeply the culture and economics of slavery were embedded in the United States, and to the kind of force necessary to uproot it. Of course this uprooting was in many ways incomplete; while the post-slavery Reconstruction era brought many political and economic freedoms to Black Americans in the south, much of that progress would be corrupted by the slavery-like programs of sharecropping and the establishment of the prison-industrial complex that persists today.This complicated history is what makes this holiday particularly susceptible to revisionism, in the way that highly politicized holidays in the US often are. In his proclamation to recognize Juneteenth, Biden wrote that the holiday is:
      A day in which we remember the moral stain and terrible toll of slavery on our country – what I’ve long called America’s original sin. A long legacy of systemic racism, inequality, and inhumanity.
      Yet the system of racial capitalism that allowed American slavery to exist still thrives today – with every Black person locked behind bars, every bullet fired by police officers into the bodies of Black children, and every Black soldier sent to murder and die to expand and maintain the country’s global system of economic domination. It is more than a little ironic that such a bill would be passed by a Congress rife with more or less open white supremacists, and signed by a president who only recently took pride in working with former segregationist politicians. For powerful American politicians to discuss Juneteenth while dismissing the idea of reparations for the descendants of enslaved people is profoundly hypocritical.Another holiday provides an instructive example: Mother’s Day can be traced to the work of Julia Ward Howe and Ann Reeves Jarvis, two peace activists who wanted to establish an anti-war holiday. Their work was carried on by Jarvis’s daughter, Anna Maria Jarvis, who lived to regret the holiday, which was rapidly commercialized and converted into another mechanism of corporate greed. Then there’s Martin Luther King Jr Day: a holiday that should be a call to action – a day in which people engage in civil disobedience or learn about the strategy and tactics of one of the most important radical organizers of the 20th century – has been sold as a day in which people must perform acts of service. While mostly well intended, that narrative muddles and dilutes King’s politics and feeds the American mythology that sporadic days of service, rather than the hard work of breaking down this system and building it anew, will somehow bring us closer to justice.We should be happy to popularize and celebrate Juneteenth. But we should celebrate it with the same fervor in which it was celebrated the summer of 2020, with protests, political education, and an understanding that the house of the slavemaster still stands, despite a fresh coat of paint. We must celebrate Juneteenth knowing the kind of force it took for enslaved Black people to attain emancipation – and the equivalent political force it may take to finally and absolutely uproot the American capitalist machine that seeks profit at the expense of Black freedom. More

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      US lawmakers advance bill to create slavery reparations commission

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      A panel of US lawmakers has advanced a decades-long effort to pay reparations to the descendants of slaves by approving legislation that would create a commission to study the issue.After an impassioned debate, the House judiciary committee voted by 25-17 to advance the bill late on Wednesday, marking the first time that it has acted on the legislation.The bill will now be considered by the House and Senate but prospects for final passage remain poor in a closely divided Congress.The legislation would establish a commission to examine slavery and discrimination in the United States from 1619 to the present. The commission would then recommend ways to educate Americans about its findings and appropriate remedies, including how the government would offer a formal apology and what form of compensation should be awarded.The bill, commonly referred to as HR 40, was first introduced by John Conyers, a Michigan representative in 1989. The 40 refers to the failed government effort to provide 40 acres (16 hectares) of land to newly freed slaves as the Civil War drew to a close.“This legislation is long overdue,” said Jerrold Nadler, the Democratic chairman of the committee. “HR 40 is intended to begin a national conversation about how to confront the brutal mistreatment of African Americans during chattel slavery, Jim Crow segregation and the enduring structural racism that remains endemic to our society today.”The momentum supporters have been able to generate for the bill follows the biggest reckoning on racism in a generation in the wake of George Floyd’s death while in police custody.But the House bill has no Republicans among its 176 co-sponsors and would need 60 votes in the evenly divided Senate to overcome a filibuster. Republicans on the judiciary committee were unanimous in voting against the measure.Jim Jordan of Ohio, the ranking Republican on the committee, said the commission’s makeup would lead to a foregone conclusion in support of reparations.“Spend $20m for a commission that’s already decided to take money from people who were never involved in the evil of slavery and give it to people who were never subject to the evil of slavery. That’s what Democrats on the judiciary committee are doing,” Jordan said.Supporters said the bill is not about a check, but about developing a structured response to historical and ongoing wrongs.“I ask my friends on the other side of the aisle, do not ignore the pain, the history and the reasonableness of this commission,” said the bill’s sponsor, Sheila Jackson Lee, a Democrat from Texas.Other Republicans on the committee also spoke against the bill, including Burgess Owens, an African American lawmaker from Utah, who said he grew up in the deep south where “we believe in commanding respect, not digging or asking for it”. But Democrats said the country’s history was full of government-sponsored actions that have discriminated against African Americans well after slavery ended. David Cicilline, a Rhode Island Democrat, said the Federal Housing Administration at one time refused to insure mortgages in Black neighborhoods while some states prevented Black army veterans from participating in the benefits of the GI Bill.“This notion of, like, I wasn’t a slave owner. I’ve got nothing to do with it misses the point,” Cicilline said. “It’s about our country’s responsibility, to remedy this wrong and to respond to it in a thoughtful way. And this commission is our opportunity to do that.”Last month, the Chicago suburb of Evanston, Illinois, became the first US city to make reparations available to its Black residents for past discrimination and the lingering effects of slavery. The money will come from the sale of recreational marijuana and qualifying households would receive $25,000 for home repairs, down payments on property, and interest or late penalties on property in the city.Polling has found longstanding resistance in the US to reparations to descendants of slaves, divided along racial lines. More

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      Biden administration revives plan to put Harriet Tubman on $20 bill

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      The US treasury is taking steps to put Harriet Tubman on the $20 bill, as was planned under Barack Obama.Harriet Tubman was a 19th-century abolitionist and political activist who escaped slavery herself, then took part in the rescues of hundreds of enslaved people, using the network of activists and safe houses known as the Underground Railroad.In 2016, Obama decided Tubman should replace Andrew Jackson on the $20 bill, leading to celebrations that an escaped slave would be honored instead of a slaveowner president.Donald Trump, who placed a portrait of Jackson, who also directed genocidal campaigns against Native Americans, prominently in the Oval Office, blocked the Obama plan.Joe Biden has now revived it, White House press secretary Jen Psaki telling reporters on Monday the treasury was “exploring ways to speed up” the process and adding: “It’s important that our money reflect the history and diversity of our country.”The president has replaced the Jackson portrait in the Oval Office with one of Benjamin Franklin, the founder who appears on the $100 bill. Such bills are known to some as “Benjamins”. Obama once said he hoped the new $20 bills would come to be known as “Tubmans”.Tubman is the subject of recent biographies and a 2019 film.In 2019, biographer Andrea Dunbar Harris told the Guardian she hoped Tubman’s presence on a new $20 bill would “drive a conversation about the value of black life, period, from slavery to the present. I don’t think we can have her on the bill without us having that conversation.” More

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      in Elections

      Amanda Gorman at Biden's inauguration reminded me: politics needs poetry

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      Obama-endorsed and wearing gold-clipped braids and Oprah-gifted earrings, 22-year old poet Amanada Gorman and her poem The Hill We Climb have been the talking point of Biden’s inauguration. Her five-minute poem, which started with the question “When day comes we ask ourselves, where can we find light in this never-ending shade?”, explored grief, redemption and recovery, and wowed the world. Imperfect but fervent, it reminded us of something important: politics needs poetry.Gorman, born in 1998 in Los Angeles and raised by a mother who works as a teacher, graduated from Harvard university in 2020. She was the first US national youth poet laureate and its youngest ever inaugural poet. Owing to a speech impediment, she couldn’t pronounce the letter R until two years ago. She has described spoken word as “my own type of pathology”. Praise has overflowed for the young poet and many have celebrated her passion, beauty and poise in this historic moment that closes the door on Trump. “I honor you, @TheAmandaGorman. Thank you,” wrote the daughter of Dr Martin Luther King Junior, Bernice King on Twitter.The clips circulating on the internet of Gorman, glowing and optimistic, stand in utter contrast to scenes of Trump supporters storming the Capitol, grotesque and desperate. She wrote the remainder of the piece after the events of 6 January , staying up late to watch the storming the Capitol. The line: “We’ve seen a force that would shatter our nation rather than share it” speaks directly to the attempted derailment of democracy.On Instagram, Gorman describes herself as a dreamer, and the line: “Our people diverse and beautiful will emerge, battered and beautiful” shows her faith – a young woman dreaming aloud before millions of people in the form of spoken word. The moment has gone viral. Spoken word is a craft and a powerful art form, from the cadence to the delivery, to the subtle choreography. The moment, as internationally syndicated as it was, belongs to America. I don’t necessarily desire to see a version of it reproduced should Keir Starmer ever be elected prime minister (nor for the poet to find inspiration in Winston Churchill speeches).American politics’ relationship to poetry has a deep legacy in its fight for justice. In 1861, Frances Ellen Watkins Harper, a poet and lecturer, wrote To the Union Savers of Cleveland, a poem about Sara Lucy Bagby, a woman who had escaped enslavement and was arrested and returned to her “owner” under the Fugitive Slave Act. Harper published the poem in abolitionist newspaper The Anti-Slavery Bugle, and addressed it fervently to the white people of Ohio, writing “And your guilty, sin-cursed Union/ Shall be shaken to its base/ Till ye learn that simple justice/ Is the right of every race.” Poetry has long been the platform for opposing the current condition. As Matt Sandler writes in The Black Romantic Revolution: “Harper and her contemporaries borrowed and transformed the techniques and theories of Romanticism in an effort to bring about the end of slavery.”Poets are vendors of aspiration and are always fashioning together depictions of a better tomorrow, but it’s fair to ask if they are ever truly listened to in political spaces.Maya Angelou read her poem On the Pulse of Morning in 1993, at the inauguration of Bill Clinton. She says: “Lift up your hearts/ Each new hour holds new chances/ For a new beginning./ Do not be wedded forever/ To fear, yoked eternally/ To brutishness./ The horizon leans forward,/ Offering you space to place new steps of change.” Clinton would later go on to instigate the war on drugs and enact the 1994 Crime Bill that would destroy many lives and accelerate the incarceration of African Americans.I have wished many times to see more poets in positions of power, though writing poetry hasn’t made presidents any less barbaric or kinder – as one might think a writer of similes would be. Obama published poems at 19 in a literary review, published in 1982 by Occidental College. Jimmy Carter was the first US president to write a book of poetry, Always a Reckoning, and Other Poems, in 1995. Neither of these men has clean hands.For now, it’s paramount that young poets be given the space, funding and opportunities to be the voices of their communities. They are often spokespeople for those who look and live like them. Don’t wait until a black poet is on the world stage to be inspired by them – often they are not invited, and often they don’t want to endorse state activities by engaging in such ceremonies.Those poems, performed on neighbourhood stages, sitting in anthologies and self-published books, showcased at slams and open mics, have the answers too. There are many young poets like Gorman, who have glistening ideas for tomorrow and deserve to be recognised and propelled into superstardom, or at least just read. Buy their books too.Gorman was an alumnus of empowering youth projects such as Youth Speaks and Urban Word. If you fell in love with Gorman’s inaugural poem, support your local equivalent too. More

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      in US Politics

      Tom Cotton calls slavery 'necessary evil' in attack on New York Times' 1619 Project

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      The Arkansas Republican senator Tom Cotton has called the enslavement of millions of African people “the necessary evil upon which the union was built”.Cotton, widely seen as a possible presidential candidate in 2024, made the comment in an interview with the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette published on Sunday.He was speaking in support of legislation he introduced on Thursday that aims to prohibit use of federal funds to teach the 1619 Project, an initiative from the New York Times that reframes US history around August 1619 and the arrival of slave ships on American shores for the first time.Cotton’s Saving American History Act of 2020 and “would prohibit the use of federal funds to teach the 1619 Project by K-12 schools or school districts”, according to a statement from the senator’s office.“The entire premise of the New York Times’ factually, historically flawed 1619 Project … is that America is at root, a systemically racist country to the core and irredeemable,” Cotton told the Democrat-Gazette.“I reject that root and branch. America is a great and noble country founded on the proposition that all mankind is created equal. We have always struggled to live up to that promise, but no country has ever done more to achieve it.”He added: “We have to study the history of slavery and its role and impact on the development of our country because otherwise we can’t understand our country. As the Founding Fathers said, it was the necessary evil upon which the union was built, but the union was built in a way, as [Abraham] Lincoln said, to put slavery on the course to its ultimate extinction.”Nikole Hannah-Jones, who was awarded this year’s Pulitzer Prize for commentary for her introductory essay to the 1619 Project, said on Friday that Cotton’s bill “speaks to the power of journalism more than anything I’ve ever done in my career”.On Sunday, she tweeted: “If chattel slavery – heritable, generational, permanent, race-based slavery where it was legal to rape, torture, and sell human beings for profit – were a ‘necessary evil’ as Tom Cotton says, it’s hard to imagine what cannot be justified if it is a means to an end.“Imagine thinking a non-divisive curriculum is one that tells black children the buying and selling of their ancestors, the rape, torture, and forced labor of their ancestors for PROFIT, was just a ‘necessary evil’ for the creation of the ‘noblest’ country the world has ever seen.“So, was slavery foundational to the Union on which it was built, or nah? You heard it from Tom Cotton himself.”Cotton responded: “More lies from the debunked 1619 Project. Describing the views of the Founders and how they put the evil institution on a path to extinction, a point frequently made by Lincoln, is not endorsing or justifying slavery. No surprise that the 1619 Project can’t get facts right.”In June, the Times was forced to issue a mea culpa after publishing an op-ed written by Cotton and entitled “Send in the troops”. The article, which drew widespread criticism, advocated for the deployment of the military to protests against police brutality toward black Americans.Times publisher AG Sulzberger initially defended the decision, saying the paper was committed to representing “views from across the spectrum”.But the Times subsequently issued a statement saying the op-ed fell short of its editorial standards, leading to the resignation of editorial page director James Bennet. More

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      in Elections

      Beto O'Rourke's ancestors were slaveholders, records reveal

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      This article is more than 6 months old Beto O’Rourke This article is more than 6 months old Beto O’Rourke’s ancestors were slaveholders, records reveal This article is more than 6 months old Exclusive: O’Rourke addresses family history for the first time and admits that he and his children are ‘beneficiaries’ of slaveholding ‘We must […] More