#on juneteenth

[disregardcanon]

jesus christ, the constitution of the texas republic was INSANE on slavery. not only was slavery enshrined as something that could never be done away with, but the steps it took further than that

manumission, the practice of someone who owned enslaved people freeing them, was entirely illegal without either congressional consent or the immediate evacuation of the enslaved people from texas elsewhere. if they were far enough north in texas that they had to go through the US to get out who exactly was going to actually accept those papers from the Government No One Recognizes as legitimately freeing. there was a lot of danger inherent in being a free black person anywhere but home (even at where you were from) but Being Completely Exiled from the place where you were freed? where people know you were freed? sure those closer to the mexican border would have been better off if that's the way they needed to go (mexico's laws were better than the US's, not worse) but that's a special flavor of awful

no free person of ANY african descent was allowed to live there without the direct consent of congress. like obviously there was give and take with mixed people and who would be able to pass as white in different situations, but that means that there's more danger, not less.

[the-perks-of-being-black]

[footnoteinhistory]

“…people in the past—in the overall American context and in the specific context of Texas—talked a lot about, and did a lot about, race. It isn’t some newly discovered fad topic. Race is right there in the documents—official and personal. It would take a concerted effort not to consider and analyze the subject, and I realize that evasion is exactly what happened in many of the textbooks that Americans used in their school social studies and history classes.

This, in part, accounts for the pained accusations about ‘revisionist’ history when historians talk about things that people had never been made aware of in their history educations.

History is always being revised, as new information comes to light and when different people see known documents and have their own responses to them, shaped by their individual experiences.”

–Annette Gordon-Reed, On Juneteenth (New York: Liveright, 2021)

[lesserjoke]

Book #148 of 2021:

On Juneteenth by Annette Gordon-Reed

In the conclusion to this book, author Annette Gordon-Reed describes it as a “brief sketch of the history of Texas told through vignettes of my family.” And that’s pretty accurate, I would say. Despite what the title suggests, it is mostly not about Juneteenth, the holiday commemorating when Texan slaves were finally freed (over two years after the Civil War had drawn to a close). Instead, it is a blend of historical account and memoir, painting a vivid picture of the state that is far more textured than the common cowboy stereotypes, as well as providing a glimpse of what it was like for the writer to grow up there during the Civil Rights era, the first black student to ever attend her elementary school. Gordon-Reed is a historian by trade, and so she brings to the text both a detailed knowledge of local events and a keen critical insight into how race and racism have shaped them. The resulting essay collection is short but impactful, even if not quite what I was expecting to find.

[Content warning for gun violence, rape, and lynching.]

★★★★☆

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[babiikpop]

“Motherland DRIP ON ME.”

- Queen Bey💁🏽‍♀️👸🏾

[shamballalin]

Separation of Church and State ~ Juneteenth

Combining Church and State in state and federal regulations is not what our Forefathers set up for the United States of America. Freedom is freedom, not censorship. It is time to pull off the systemic racism bandage covering the infected national wound masking as a difference of opinion. Blaming religion and religion’s quasi-moral and racist views as the reason for political motivations not only…

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[jennamacaroni]

No other state brings together so many disparate and defining characteristics all in one–a state that shares a border with a foreign nation, a state with a long history of disputes between Europeans and an indigenous population and between Anglo-Europeans and people of Spanish origin, a state that had existed as an independent nation, that had plantation-based slavery and legalized Jim Crow. Any one of these things would leave a mark on a place. Having them all together almost certainly accounts for Texas's extreme nature, such deep internal complexities creating tensions that roil. All the major currents of American history flow through Texas. As big as it is, that is still a lot for any one state to handle.

Annette Gordon-Reed, "On Juneteenth"

[craigfernandez]