During this Freedom Holiday season for African Americans, Planet Harmony is honoring ten African American Green Heroes for 2010 for their outstanding efforts to challenge environmental tyranny.
Two of the longest days of summer mark double freedom holidays for African Americans.
On July 4th, America as a whole comes together to celebrate the official break from the tyrannical King of England. America’s revolutionaries proudly declared in 1776 “all men are created equal….”
But equality as expressed in the Declaration of Independence didn’t mean freedom from the tyranny of slavery for America’s people of African descent. In fact America’s Founders actually wrote into the original US Constitution that “other persons” –in other words, black slaves —were only equal to 3/5ths of free citizens.
That math didn’t start to be corrected in until on January 1, 1863 President Abraham Lincoln used executive orders as commander in chief in the Civil War to free an estimated 20,000 African Americans slaves in Union-occupied territory of the rebel Confederacy.
By the end of the Civil War in April of 1865, most but not all of more than 4 million slaves were freed as the Union Army advanced through the South.
But not all had been freed, especially in Texas.
And so it was on June 19th of 1865 in Galveston, Texas—two and a half year’s after Lincoln’s Proclamation –that Union General Gordon Granger proclaimed freedom for all enslaved Africans in the Southwest.
With few union troops in Texas, slaveholders were able to keep news of emancipation suppressed for nearly two and a half years. But when the slaves finally found out it touched off a jubilant celebration that continues—now some 30 States have either official state holidays and days of observance of Juneteenth, and many have a musical theme that recalls the exuberant singing and dancing of the original Juneteenth.
For more info about Juneteenth: