If, like me, you’ve wondered how the name Juneteenth (not the holiday, more about that in a moment) came about, it’s what linguists call a portmanteau, a combination of two words into one, like the way fourteen and night became fortnight or the how the combination of breakfast and lunch is now commonly known as brunch. So, June nineteenth turned into Juneteenth.
As to what the holiday is about, I turn to retired teacher and activist, Ms. Opal Lee who has spent decades working to make Juneteenth a federally recognized holiday. I thought that this date was in honor of the emancipation of slaves, but that’s not quite right. The Emancipation Proclamation was signed by President Lincoln in January of 1863. What happened on June 19th, 1865 may seem astonishing. Union troops arrived in Galveston more than two and a half years after the proclamation to announce and enforce the emancipation of slaves by “General Order No. 3.”
Historians seem ridiculously divided on whether Texas had not caught up with the the news or if they were deliberately not letting their slaves know. Considering part of the problem was the low number of union troops in Texas, and the fact that even then it wouldn’t take years for news to travel there, I’d solidly go with the latter. Texas was still in rebellion. I don’t know how we can deny that.
Part of the announcement was that the freed people were advised to stay and work as hired labor, but instead many fled to find other work and family that they had been separated from. Wouldn’t you have done the same?
The President of the United States signed Juneteenth into law as an officially recognized federal holiday in 2021, and as Ms. Opal Lee said, “now we can all finally celebrate. The whole country together.”
So, how does one pick a song for what amounts to a nation’s second Independence Day? I went over so many possibilities these last few days and settled on something new, well, newer. This marvelous collaboration is between the trio who call themselves August Greene and the vocalist who goes simply by the name Brandy. It’s somewhere between jazz, hip hop, and rhythm and blues. The original song is from 1991 by Sounds of Blackness. This 2018 version is just . . . well, you give it a listen and see what you think. It’s called “Optimistic.”
Jeff's Song of the Day 