‘I Wish Juneteenth Could Remain Underground, Secret, and Sacred’

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When President Joe Biden signed a law to make Juneteenth a federal holiday last week, not everyone was convinced he’d made the right decision.

“I wish Juneteenth could remain underground, secret, and sacred,” said Tricia Hersey, founder of The Nap Ministry, a movement to make rest a form of resistance and community healing.

Hersey has always loved the secrecy of the civil rights movement, and how Black and Indigenous people have historically cultivated underground cultures in clandestine spaces, like church basements, where they could be free of white people, and free to strategize, educate, stay safe, and experience their joy. In fact, the Atlanta-based theologian, artist, and activist created her ministry in that image: as a subversive movement encouraging people to tap out of the capitalist grind and embrace rest as a form of social justice. 

But now, Hersey worries that Juneteenth—a day commemorating the end of Black enslavement in Texas two years after the Civil War ended—being thrust into the national consciousness could water down Black micro-histories. And she’s not alone. Many Black Americans—especially in Texas where Juneteenth has always been widely observed—would rather Juneteenth remain a bespoke holiday shared among those with direct ties to its history. Or at least, they worry what could happen when it’s not.

“What I want to know is, is Juneteenth as a national celebrated holiday something you ask for, or is it something that was actually given to you in hopes of mitigating your rebellion?” Richard Benson, an associate professor of education at Spelman College, told VICE News.

Juneteenth commemorates June 19, 1865, the day Union troops arrived in Galveston, Texas, and informed enslaved Black people they were free—and in fact had been freed by President Abraham Lincoln’s Emancipation Proclamation more than two years before. Celebrations have traditionally included barbecues, parades, speakers, and family gatherings.

 Texas was the last Confederate state to get the news, and the reasons for that are unclear for some but very clear for others.

“Capitalism was obviously something that was a driving force for those who owned people,” Benson told VICE News. “They wanted to extend that ownership and capitalize on the opportunity for one more crop.”

A century and a half later, Hersey worries about the continued imposition of white profitability on the Black experience. Nike, Target, Twitter, and other companies made an effort last year to make Juneteenth a paid day off, and recent marketing messages reduce the deeper meanings of Juneteenth, which is linked to enslavement as an economic engine and subsequent failure to reconcile with Black Americans through reparations and economic justice. Hersey compares the superficial embrace to the heavily critiqued, commercial embrace of Black History Month and, now, Pride Month. Calling out the irony of acknowledging slavery with time off, Hersey said the only appropriate response isn’t a holiday but rather reparations or redistribution of wealth.

“There are spaces that are just sacred for us that we have to continue to try to hold really deeply,” said Hersey, about the public conversation on white supremacy in the wake of George Floyd’s 2020 murder by a Minneapolis cop and the movement that arose in its wake. “I'm just really in my feelings about the ways in which it is being commodified.”

Juneteenth has been described as a once-obscure Texas holiday. 

As Texans migrated, they took the celebration with them. And during moments of national reflection, especially when Black people have interrogated what it means to move beyond civil rights to emancipation, interest in Juneteenth tends to surge. 

That’s what happened during the mid-century civil rights movement, according to Benson. The Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC), established in 1960, “began to identify itself as part of this genealogical thread of resistance … being part and parcel of that legacy of ancestral struggle and an anti-imperialist perspective on the global struggle for freedom.”

“So, Juneteenth came to reflect that kith and kinship tie to struggle that would literally be a part of what David Walker’s appeal reflected,” said Benson, referring to an 1829 anti-slavery document written by Walker, a free Black man, who implored Black people to revolt against their white enslavers. 

Growing up in Georgia, the Rev. Otis Moss recalls January 1 being a special day of observance in Southern Black churches and communities because of its link to Emancipation; the Emancipation Proclamation went into effect on Jan. 1, 1863. Community members were eager to know about the contrast between that day and Juneteenth, and informally passed along stories of resistance and self-determination that weren’t included in textbooks.

 “Parents and elders shared with us information not recorded in white published history books and civics books,” said Moss, 86, who led sit-ins and other actions during the civil rights movement. “While we were segregated and in a system of injustice, truth kept breaking through.”

Charles Black, now 80, was a Morehouse College student and co-founder of the Atlanta Student Movement, which produced the widely-published civil rights manifesto “An Appeal for Human Rights” in March 1960. In recalling how Juneteenth came into his consciousness, he remembers the day he arrived in Washington, D.C., in 1963 to participate in the March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom. As the bus pulled in near the Lincoln Memorial, he was initially concerned about the large number of people and the potential for violence.

But things stay calm. “There was no problem, no problem of any kind at all,” said Black, who was once arrested at Atlanta’s Terminal Station and sentenced to 10 days of labor at the city farm for nonviolent, direct-action protest. In D.C., Black said the 1963 march “became a triumphant, remobilizing kind of experience to see that we had such broad support around the country.”

At the time, the Black community didn’t have much knowledge about their heritage nor a real connection to Africa, but as the conversation around Juneteenth surfaced, it was part of an awakening to “our African heritage,” he said. Lessons served up in textbooks were still portraying enslaved Black people as “happy dancing people just thrilled to get up before the sun and work all day for free.”

“It did become more of a conversation during that March on Washington,” Black said. “People were beginning to talk about Juneteenth. Many folks had never heard of that story as to why there was such a day or that there was such a day.” 

In 1968, after the assassination of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., the Rev. Ralph Abernathy, now head of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, continued organizing the next phase of King’s agenda—the quest for economic justice through the Poor People’s Campaign. The organization acknowledged Juneteenth by hosting Solidarity Day on June 19.

 The goal was to “meet with government officials to demand jobs, unemployment insurance, a fair minimum wage, and education for poor adults and children designed to improve their self-image and self-esteem,” according to The Martin Luther King, Jr. Research and Education Institute at Stanford University.

Arriving in D.C. by the busload on May 12 of that year, nearly 3,000 people representing a diverse coalition—indigenous, Latino, white, and Black—camped out in tents in what was dubbed Resurrection City, managed by a young Rev. Jesse L. Jackson, the city’s “mayor.” This massive act of civil disobedience was designed to pressure President Lyndon B. Johnson to embrace anti-poverty policies.

 “SNCC led the way, and then you have the older activists that would be considered veterans or the preacher caste kind of adopting this moment of jubilee,” Benson said. “I would say it was symbolic for us in order to be able to state that this is our Emancipation Day.”

Black, acknowledging the ebb and flow of Juneteenth interest over the years, said he is totally on board with the idea of Juneteenth as a national holiday.

“Last year was really the first time in a good while there was much noise made about Juneteenth,” Black said. “It's a matter of being kind of slapped in the face hard enough one time to begin to remember all of these things in the past that were so significant in history.”

East Texas native and faith blogger Vernetta Freeney has renewed qualms about the recognition of the holiday. She worries widespread commemoration forces Juneteenth into a larger Black American narrative that erases Black Texans. This includes stories of how newly freed Black Texans started searching for loved ones, reunited with family members who were sold off, and put their money together to buy land and establish small Black towns. Many accounts generalize Juneteenth as an observance of freedom for all enslaved Black people, which is patently not true.

Texas, as we know it, couldn’t exist without enslaved people, Freeney said.

“Stephen F. Austin, who was known as the father of Texas, said that [white settlers] can't come here, and they won't have successful plantations without Black labor,” Freeney said of Austin’s appeal to the Mexican government to allow slavery. “So, they made a concession.”

Now, the first federally recognized Juneteenth has come and gone, and Hersey is clear about a few things.

“No matter what the government does, Black people are always going to our thing and make space and hold memories,” said Hersey, who spent the weekend barbecuing with her family and observing inspired Black events.

“We were always going to be rooted in our traditions, in our subversion; I have always believed we existed in joy and freedom. The holiday seemed like an afterthought.”

Deborah Douglas is author of “U.S. Civil Rights Trail: A Traveler’s Guide to the People, Places, and Events That Made the Movement” (Moon, 2021) and the Pulliam Distinguished Professor of Journalism at DePauw University. Find her @debofficially in Twitter and Instagram. 

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