GAME CHANGERS MAGAZINE | 18
JUNETEENTH Celebrating Unity Of Purpose In An Era Of Darkness BY SARAH M. BILLUPS, MSW, LCSW, ACSW
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UNETEENTH is the nationally recognized African American Independence Day. It is the celebration of the last recognized day of slavery in America. June 19, 1865 is heralded as the beginning of our real freedom. General Gordon Granger arrived in Galveston, Texas to find that blacks people were still being held in captivity, even though they had been free for two years. He told them that they were free, and had the backup of a full battalion of soldiers to enforce his words.
When the black people realized that they were free, they dropped everything right where it was, and ran out into the streets. There were great celebrations, great jubilation, as they tasted freedom for the first time. Many of them took off, trying to find family members who had been sold away. JUNETEENTH is symbolic of that day, and celebrates the end of a legacy of slavery imposed upon our ancestors. It is incumbent upon us to recognize and celebrate this day. We are linked by the American Black Diaspora, a by-product of slavery in America. This makes us unknown relatives, and the blood of our stolen and sold ancestors has deemed it so. JUNETEENTH represents the official end of the brutal practice of slavery. I wish I could say “…and they lived happily ever after…”, but unfortunately I cannot. It was after this time that we had the birth of the KKK;, an evolving police force; black codes; death, murder, and destruction of multiple black communities by angry, jealous, white mobs; bombs dropped on Tulsa’s Black Wall Street, and an unknown number of black men, women, and children murdered; the horrendous “Devil”s Punchbowl” event in Mississippi; inhumane test
