Even though, then-U.S. president Abraham Lincoln issued the Emancipation Proclamation on January 1, 1863 proclaiming, “That all persons held as slaves are, and henceforward shall be free,” captured Africans remained in the forcible custody of white people in Texas until June 19, 1865.
Many Africans in the U.S. are preparing to celebrate Juneteenth, the holiday that remembers that day in 1865.
Really, what is there for Africans to celebrate?
Smithsonian.com article titled “Juneteenth: Our Other Independence Day,” offers this as a possible answer: “In amazement and disbelief, the 250,000 former slaves in Texas learned that they had been freed by the Emancipation Proclamation…Shocked, disoriented, most likely fearful of an uncertain future in which they could do as they pleased, the liberated slaves of Texas celebrated. Their moment of jubilee was spontaneous and ecstatic, and began a tradition of marking freedom on Juneteenth.”
Such a ticklish suggestion.
Free on an alien land?
How is that Emancipation?
The thieves that stole already-free Africans also stole the land that they are letting their stolen Africans “free” on.
Let a captured bird free or a hooked fish back in the sea, that’s the last time you will see that bird or fish. But not an African in the U.S.
A genuine Emancipation Proclamation would have had Africans, newly freed from the parasitic clutches of white power, on fleets of ships destined for Africa, along with the 200 years’ worth of wealth which the U.S. accumulated in the commodification of black skins.
Instead, the worthless document left Africans stuck in an environment where we must constantly beg, plead and attempt to convince white people that “black lives matter” everyday. This is not “liberation.”
