Day 1345: 5 Minute Freewrite: Sunday - Prompt: juneteenth

A rare nonfiction freewrite on Juneteenth – my family hails on both sides from Texas as do a lot of our family friends and church members, so I can't think of a time when I didn't know about Juneteenth, and wasn't involved in some kind of acknowledgment of June 19, 1865. It has been celebrated by the survivors of the cruel enslavement of Africans in America, and their descendants in Texas, since 1866.

The facts: the Emancipation Proclamation that freed all slaves in the rebellious Southern states was at last enforced in Galveston, Texas by the Union army, there being no Confederate Army left to contest that since R.E. Lee, commander-in-chief of Confederate forces, had surrendered on April 9, 1865. At that point, Texan slavers had to give it up at last – and thus, for people of my heritage, Juneteenth is the day that freedom at last rang from sea to shining sea.

Juneteenth is about freedom, unmixed, and many African Americans have celebrated it as a counterweight or even an alternative of July 4, since freedom for SOME was celebrated while they either actively participated in or tacitly approved the enslavement of Africans and the destructive of the Native American over that same 89 years, and then extended that hateful, freedom-destroying behavior to all people not Anglo-Saxon Protestant males for a lot of decades afterward.

Remember: it took until the 60s for the rights of freedom to be settled for EVERYBODY, and even now, there are plenty of people that are going to come out this July 4 and bring R.E. Lee's flag – that flag of traitors wanting ME and the 45 million people of my heritage to be enslaved FOREVER and willing to betray their country to accomplish that – together with the flag that would have gone right along with that but for the Confederate betrayal.

There are plenty of people RIGHT NOW that want to go back to when only Anglo-Saxon males have full rights in this country, and plenty of them are working hard to strip freedoms from you and me. If you don't know that, you haven't been paying attention. If you don't like me saying that, too bad. Juneteenth means I'm FREE.

This year, Juneteenth's status as a counterweight and alternative to July 4 finally reached federal holiday status, and I am glad to see it – the day where freedom came to this country for its OTHER founding descendants, at last properly acknowledged. All of you are invited to celebrate the true day of UNMIXED freedom too, with the reminder that freedom had to be fought for and the opponents of it made to surrender in the past, and the same thing has to be done now. Enjoy the day … but don't miss your place in the fight.

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