Jubilee Juneteenth: how our people celebrated freedom time

Black Issues Book Review, May-June, 2003 by Angela P. Dodson

During this season of Juneteeth, Black Issues Book Review lifts up the voices of the ancestors in celebration of the Emancipation Proclamation's 140th anniversary. These passages words of freedom and songs of Jubilee, compiled with affection and admiration for generations gone transport us to a moment of jubilation we must always hold dear. Whether through the backward glance of a former slave Temple Cummins's mother echoing "Is free, I's free" across the plantation or the Emancipation Proclamation's legally binding declaration that the bondspeople shall be "forever free," we are reminded of our great-great-great grandparents unflagging fortitude. We find ample evidence whether in lyric fragments or a recipe to marvel at the capacity of our foremothers and forefathers to pray and hope and work for a better day.

In our bones, we carry the ancestors' anguish. In our souls, we feel them gasp from the chokehold of bondage. But in our hearts, we are inspired to know that when Emancipation was decreed, they embraced their liberty. They danced and stomped and swayed and wept with the promise that their children and grandchildren and great-grandchildren would be free. And now we must honor them by never taking for granted the freedoms and civil liberties they were denied.

Feast upon these literary offerings, these ancestral libations, these balms to the soul. And know that through the ancestors' words, Jubilee is ours to claim.

Jubilee: 1: often capitalized: a year of emancipation and restoration provided by ancient Hebrew law to be kept every 50 years by the emancipation of Hebrew slaves, restoration of alienated lands to their former owners, and omission of all cultivation of the land

2 a: a special anniversary; especially: a 50th anniversary b: a celebration of such an anniversary

3 a: a period of time proclaimed by the Roman Catholic pope ordinarily every 25 years as a time of special solemnity b: a special plenary indulgence granted during a year of jubilee to Roman Catholics who perform certain specified works of repentance and piety

4 a: JUBILATION b: a season of celebration

5: an Afro-American religious song usually referring to a time of future happiness [c] 2001 by Merriam-Webster, Incorporated

At nine o'clock all the slaves gathered at the great house and marster and missus came out on the porch and stood side by side. You could hear a pin drop, everything was so quiet. Then marster said, "good morning," and missus said, "Good morning children," they were both crying, then marster said, men women and children, you are free. You are no longer my slaves. The Yankees will be here soon."

--Mary Anderson, North Carolina, quoted in Remembering Slavery: African Americans Talk About Their Personal Experiences of Slavery and Freedom, edited by Ira Berlin, Marc Favreau and Steven F. Miller, the New Press with The Library of Congress, W. W. Norton & Company; Book and Cassette edition, October 1998, ISBN 1-565-84425-4

THE LATE AFTERNOON OF THE 1863 NEW YEAR'S Day, Matilda came almost flying from slave row. "Ya'll seen dat white man jes' rid in here? Ya'll ain't gon' b'leeve! He in dere cussin' to massa it jes' came over de railroad telegraph wire Pres'dent Lincoln done signed `Mancipation Proclamation dat set us free!"

--Roots by Alex Haley Doubleday September 1976 (reissue edition), ISBN 0-385-03787-2

AS THE YEAR 1863 CAME TO A CLOSE A BLEAK atmosphere settled over the whole South. That year was also a high watermark in the lives of the slaves, for the word seeped through every hamlet and village that Abraham Lincoln had issued a proclamation emancipating the slaves.... the year 1863 saw a wholesale disappearance of the black people from the southern plantations.

--Jubilee by Margaret Walker, Houghton Mifflin (1966), March 2001, ISBN 0-613-29273-1

IT WAS ON JUNE 19TH [1865] THAT THE UNION soldiers, led by Major General Gordon Granger, landed at Galveston, Texas, with news that the war had ended and that the enslaved were now free. Note that this was two and a half years after President Lincoln's Emancipation Proclamation, which had become official January 1, 1863. The Emancipation Proclamation had little impact on the Texans due to the minimal number of Union troops to enforce the new Executive Order....

Later attempts to explain this two and a half year delay in the receipt of this important news have yielded several versions that have been handed down through the years. Often told is the story of a messenger who was murdered on his way to Texas with the news of freedom. Another is that the news was deliberately withheld by the enslavers to maintain the labor force on the plantations.--From www.Juneteenth.com

WHEN FREEDOM WAS 'CLARED, MARSTER WOULDN'T tell 'em, but mother she hear him telling mistus that the slaves was free but they didn't know it and he's not gwineter tell'em till he makes another crop or two. When mother hear that she say she slip out of the chimney corner and crack her heels together four times and shouts, "I's free, I's free."