Guest Post: The Freedom of Juneteenth - an African-American Myth

Blackwarren Books is dedicated to being a voice for the marginalized, including for the BIPOC community. On Juneteenth, we asked writer Wesley Zimmerman, a contributor to The Unconventional, to provide us with some crucial context from the point of view of a Black man living in America.

History in America is a strange beast because a lot of it is lies. This is true for Juneteenth as much as any other date. This isn’t a surprise - the “people of the pale” often rewrite history to make themselves the heroes. If you don't believe that I could bore you with a vast number of examples, but that isn't what we’re doing here today. Today, we are looking at another lie, one of omission that has damaged lives and may likely have killed people: how Black people in America are free.

The Black Experience in America

But let us start with some context. Let us say that you were falsely imprisoned for a crime you didn't commit. You serve a large portion of your sentence and a review of your case sets you free. But instead of actually setting you free they love the job you are doing so much that they decide to not tell you and keep you working for another two and a half years, during which you were beaten, stabbed, hospitalized, and starved. If this sounds horribly unfair to you, add to the fact that not only did this happen to hundreds of thousands of people (a quarter of a million people in Texas alone) but that you were not suspected of a crime or even actual criminals; these people were slaves. Whose only crime was to be born Black in proximity to white people.

At this point, the Union army shows up and forces the Texans that still had slaves to set them free. At which point you are actually released you are told there will be no compensation for the extra time you spent in jail and that you're not welcome anymore. The people of Texas not only disobeyed a Federal order but they did so for two and a half years. Of course, white overlords were not punished for their “civic” disobedience. Unequal punishment under the law has been a thing since Bacon’s Rebellion. It states that under the law, property (Black people) had no rights. This is what it was like to be a Black person in Texas, as that was the last state to tell the numerous slaves still toiling in the hot sun for that extra two and a half years. So after being freed they were often kicked out of the home they had lived in and told they had to go elsewhere. Surprisingly, many of them ended up in the villages of Native Americans who taught them how to survive and often took them in and made them tribe members. Those who could not find a sponsor were left to their own devices to make their way north to a better life.

Alas, that was not to be, for living as a slave gives you a very small set of skills - like picking cotton or growing rice. The skills of swimming, recognizing poisonous snakes, avoiding wild animals, knowing which foods were not deadly, and of course not being murdered by white people that were now angry they would either be forced to do their own work for a change, or have to pay someone to do that work for them, or were just mad as a hornet at all the Black faces that should be crushed under the heel of their fabulous white supremacist ideology walking around free. With that mindset, you are now on the run, night and day, running for your life from all of the many things that Mother Nature can throw at you - including the good ole boys in hoods trying to rape and murder you in a variety of ugly painful ways.

The funny thing is that even if you were freed on the day the law was passed (January 1, 1863) you still had to deal with remnants of the Confederate army if you were heading North to get out of the Confederate-held areas. Surprisingly enough, even if you actually got to the North your life wasn't much better. The North had a major problem with the idea of whites heading into the South to die for Black people, so there were numerous riots. Angry Northern whites who didn't want to get drafted into the military to possibly get killed for a Black man began to hunt and kill Black men in the streets. There were some Blacks who followed the ideology of Harriet Tubman, which was to leave the United States and make their way to Canada where they could avoid this issue altogether. 

You Think Today Is Better? It’s Not

But alas, even more than a century later, white people in America are still attacking Black people for celebrating the fact that their ancestors were freed. If you go look on the internet right now and type in Willowbrook, Illinois you will find that 22 people were shot and one person was killed celebrating this event.  And so we are “free” here in America - except we aren't. The laws written by whites in both the North and the South limit our access to housing, jobs, loans, schooling, colleges, and most important of all: opportunity. Studies have shown that given a resume with almost identical qualifications many businesses won't hire someone with an “ethnic” name, or give a loan. Representation in politics is low as gerrymandering cuts up neighborhoods in such a way that every area has a white majority. We aren't allowed our freedom; the police don't protect us but instead actively murder us along with numerous unknown assailants, many of which never get solved.

Here in the face of all these statements is yet another lie perpetrated upon us as if we were sheep. The sheep spend their whole lives fearing the wolf only to be devoured by the shepherds. We aren't free, we are just imprisoned in a different kind of slavery. One of by-laws, politics, missed opportunity, and outright bigotry. We can celebrate the day that our ancestors were “freed" but we are not, nor have we ever been free. The fight continues.

For more from Wesley, read his article series read, “A Hint of Color”, which explores how POC are presented in speculative fiction and pop culture.