Juneteenth became a new federal holiday in 2021. Since then, I have often heard some of my fellow citizens asking why there is a new holiday and why we can all celebrate the Fourth of July.
But here is a bit of ironic history. Before the Civil War, White Americans primarily celebrated the Fourth of July, with very few exceptions. “Black Americans demonstrated considerably less enthusiasm. And those who did observe the holiday preferred—like Fredrick Douglass—to do so on July 5 to accentuate better the difference between the high promises of the Fourth and the low realities of life for African Americans while avoiding confrontations with drunken white revelers.”
After the end of the Civil War in 1865, the nation’s 4 million newly emancipated citizens transformed Independence Day into a celebration of black freedom. The Fourth became an almost exclusively African American holiday in the states of the former Confederacy—until Southerners snuffed these Black commemorations out after violently reasserting their dominance of the region.
African Americans, meanwhile, embraced the Fourth like never before. From Washington, D.C., to Mobile, Alabama, they gathered to watch fireworks and listen to orators recite the Emancipation Proclamation, the Declaration of Independence, and the Thirteenth Amendment, which abolished slavery when it was ratified in late 1865. Having lost a bloody four-year war to break free from the United States and defend the institution of slavery, Confederate sympathizers had little desire to celebrate the Fourth now that they were back in the Union and slavery was no more. On this day in South Carolina, they mostly “shut themselves within doors.
In Charleston and elsewhere, whites resented their formerly enslaved people, turning the Fourth into commemorating black liberty. What “a dreadful day” it was, complained one Charleston planter in a letter to his daughter. A local merchant lamented in his journal that the nation’s holiday had become “a nigger day.” Many northerners resented it as well.
In the upcoming years, many Southerners began to squash the African American Celebration of the Fourth of July. In the 1870s, African Americans’ celebrations of the Fourth of July in many southern states were broken up by mobs and by law enforcement. By the early 1900s, Charleston and Atlanta had forbidden vendors from setting up food stalls along the streets where Black residents had long congregated on the Fourth. The African American noted a Memphis newspaper, now marked the holiday by “going way off by himself,” celebrating behind closed doors in Black churches and cultural institutions or with family.
The message was sent that African Americans were unfit for the fruits of freedom bestowed upon the country in 1786. Clearly, the freedoms achieved by winning the war over England did not include African Americans. Because of our peculiar history, this holiday will always mean different things to people.
On this day, I celebrate Independence Day despite its peculiar history. We have a great country with an exciting and sometimes contradictory history. But we are fools if we try to ignore and not understand this peculiar history. I served in the military because I believe in the principles and ideals of this country. It will always be an aspiration, however. I have observed people today whose attitudes are not so dissimilar from people in the 1850s.
As an African American, the Fourth of July and Juneteenth are worthy of celebration. But it is also essential to understand our history. Our history shows that African Americans enthusiastically celebrated Independence Day once free. Once freed, African Americans were even punished for celebrating this day in some areas of the country.
History also shows that many Southerners were less enthusiastic about celebrating Independence Day once formerly enslaved people were free. Think about this irony!
Why would anyone be upset that some people only wanted to celebrate freedom once free? Or how can anyone celebrate freedom while being enslaved?
Our country has both a beautiful and ugly history. This is also true for most countries throughout the world. We are still greater than most countries.
The best we can do is to accept our country and its history, the good and the ugly.
Only in that way will it ever become truly INDEPENDENT!
HAPPY INDEPENDENCE DAY TO ALL!
Jerome Pearson
July 4, 2023, 11:30am
Credit to an article in the Atlantic Magazine in July 2018 titled:
“WHEN THE FOURTH OF JULY WAS A BLACK HOLIDAY.”