Happy Juneteenth Day

Tuesday, June 19^th is the 153^rd Juneteenth Independence Day  

The date celebrates the June 19, 1865, announcement of the loss of the Civil War and the abolition of all slaves in the state of Texas.  This was two and a half years after Lincoln’s Emancipation Proclamation went into effect on January 1^st. 

In Chicago, many events will be held on the following weekend, and a  number of concerts will be held by the Old Town School of Music.  Customary celebrations, like those held in Texas in the late 1800’s and early 1900’s provided an opportunity for simple freedoms like singing, dancing, and readings from worshipped artists.

In Aurora, Events With Elegance, a member of the National Association of Juneteenth Lineage, will sponsor it's 2nd Juneteenth Dinner Dance at six o'clock in the evening on Saturday, June 21, 2003, at the Hyatt Hotel located in Lisle, IL. The Event will also consist of a Speaker and Live Entertainment. African American entrepreneurs will have a chance to display and sell their products to promote their business to other African American consumers. For more information or updates, please send an e-mail to: eventswithelegance@msn.com

Why June 19^th?  It was on that date in 1865 that Union soldiers under the command of General Granger finally washed ashore in Galveston to inform the Texans of what had transpired.  By and large, Texas and its citizens were not impressed.  The limited size of the Union force and the increased numbers of slave-holders fleeing southern states to Texas as the war ravaged their plantations made for little response or acceptance of the news.

Other stories and conspiracy theories, most likely apocryphal, surfaced as reasons for the delay in the announcement for over two years after the President’s Proclamation.  The soldier sent to carry the news to Texas was murdered by those who wanted to prevent such information from reaching the fields.  Plantation owners kept the information from their work force to maintain order and production.  The Union soldiers were complicit in keeping the information from slaves to assure cotton crops were picked before freedom.

In fact, slaves worked and tilled the fields for over two years after they had been acknowledged free men and women in the Capitol.

Despite the Lone Star pushback, after Lee surrendered in April of 1865, it was only a matter of time before the tide of change would sweep across the nation.  Texas Supreme Court decisions in the next decade reaffirmed the status of freedom for those brave African Americans who had cautiously celebrated their liberty in June in the streets of Galveston upon first hearing the news.

Other racial justice organizations will mark the day remembering the horrific history of the slave trade and its everlasting impact on a people and two continents separated by over 5000 nautical miles. 

Over 2 million died while crossing the Middle Passage into America. 

At least as many others perished during the forced transportation across West Africa to the waiting ports.

Estimates of total captives brought to America for slavery run as high as 12 million.

Several hundred captives were chained together below decks in deplorable conditions, suffering cramped contagion and death on the journey.

Insurance brokers provided for coverage in cases of drowning, but not simply deaths.  As a result, some historians visualize the Atlantic sea bottom marking the exact paths of ships with the mountains of bones left from throwing strings of sick or unwanted slaves overboard. Deplorable.

It’s small wonder that Juneteenth will likewise mark the strong, resentful argument for reparations by racial justice organizers like the Black Land and Liberation Initiative.  They and others symbolically revisit the issue by highlighting General William Sherman’s original order in 1865 by recognizing a national day of action.  According to writer Aviana Willis, “In 40 acres across 40 cities black people will take nonviolent direct action to occupy and reclaim spaces such as abandoned schools and empty lots, with the goal of putting these spaces into service of the community.”

(http://inthesetimes.com/article/20249/black-land-and-liberation-forty-acres-mule-juneteenth)

Black Land and Liberation Initiative states it clearly:  “We are people who have been enslaved and dispossessed as a result of the oppressive, exploitative, extractive system of colonialism and white supremacy.  In this system, our labor and its products have been taken from us for generations for the accumulation of wealth by others.”(http://blacklandandliberation.org/)

“We have been taught in school that the source of the policy of “40 acres and a mule” was Union General William T. Sherman’s Special Field Order No. 15, issued on Jan. 16, 1865. (That account is half-right: Sherman prescribed the 40 acres in that Order, but not the mule. The mule would come later.) But what many accounts leave out is that this idea for massive land redistribution actually was the result of a discussion that Sherman and Secretary of War Edwin M. Stanton held four days before Sherman issued the Order, with 20 leaders of the black community in Savannah, Ga., where Sherman was headquartered following his famous March to the Sea. The meeting was unprecedented in American history.

“Today, we commonly use the phrase “40 acres and a mule,” but few of us have read the Order itself. Three of its parts are relevant here. Section one bears repeating in full: “The islands from Charleston, south, the abandoned rice fields along the rivers for thirty miles back from the sea, and the country bordering the St. Johns river, Florida, are reserved and set apart for the settlement of the negroes [sic] now made free by the acts of war and the proclamation of the President of the United States.”

“Section two specifies that these new communities, moreover, would be governed entirely by black people themselves: ” … on the islands, and in the settlements hereafter to be established, no white person whatever, unless military officers and soldiers detailed for duty, will be permitted to reside; and the sole and exclusive management of affairs will be left to the freed people themselves … By the laws of war, and orders of the President of the United States, the negro [sic] is free and must be dealt with as such.”

“Finally, section three specifies the allocation of land: ” … each family shall have a plot of not more than (40) acres of tillable ground, and when it borders on some water channel, with not more than 800 feet water front, in the possession of which land the military authorities will afford them protection, until such time as they can protect themselves, or until Congress shall regulate their title.”

“With this Order, 400,000 acres of land — “a strip of coastline stretching from Charleston, South Carolina, to the St. John’s River in Florida, including Georgia’s Sea Islands and the mainland thirty miles in from the coast,” as Barton Myers reports — would be redistributed to the newly freed slaves. The extent of this Order and its larger implications are mind-boggling, actually.” (http://www.pbs.org/wnet/african-americans-many-rivers-to-cross/history/the-truth-behind-40-acres-and-a-mule/)

Stanton had gone to a group of African American preachers and ministers at the conclusion of the war, asking what would be an appropriate payment for the debasing of a race and people.  The answer was the assurance of future economic freedom by receiving land on which to farm, land that had been taken in Sherman’s march along the southeastern coast of the United States.  Sherman later threw in the single mule with the 40 acres – as many of the pack animals were now available after the war.

“And what happened to this astonishingly visionary program, which would have fundamentally altered the course of American race relations? Andrew Johnson, Lincoln’s successor and a sympathizer with the South, overturned the Order in the fall of 1865, and, as Barton Myers sadly concludes, “returned the land along the South Carolina, Georgia and Florida coasts to the planters who had originally owned it” — to the very people who had declared war on the United States of America.”

Only a small handful of states – Hawaii, Montana, New Hampshire, North Dakota and South Dakota – do not recognize the date as a day for observance, a ceremonial holiday or state sanctioned holiday.  45 other states, including Illinois, recognize the date’s importance and its observance of the participation and achievements of African-Americans in the progress of our country. 

My Pocahontas

My Pocahontas

I honestly believed my mother was Native American.  My brothers and I were proud of that. 

She was also a very discreet and secretive mystery in our constantly questioning lives.  When we’d ask about her childhood and early life, she was often evasive and cautious to cover her answers with the frosting of anecdote rather than actual answers.  But in our minds we fantasized another truth.

"How’d you get that scar by your right eye?  Why is your nose bent and different than ours?  Why do you turn so much darker in the sun while we just burn?"

“Dog bite.”  “Thrown baseball bat.”  “Dunno, just do.”

She was born in Chickasha, Oklahoma, and I knew just enough about the Trail of Tears to believe my mother was definitely Cherokee.  My younger brother believed more romantically she was Apache and hopefully had carbines stored somewhere in a wall in the basement.  Whatever, we agreed that was no dog bite.   More likely from some ceremony of bravery, self-administered before a snapping fire against a purple sky. 

Our extended family helped fuel our belief.  They whispered to us when we were tightly pajamed in bed, “Just so you know, your Mother is a half-breed, you know.” 

“Really?” But they mistook the excitement in our mouthing voices for horror, not the ecstatic hope that Mom was something wild and beautiful and filled with a history of freedom and boundlessness. 

“Yes, really. And that’s just the beginning, I’m afraid.”

My mother and father eloped in 1946, just like Elizabeth Warren’s parents did over a decade earlier in 1932.  My father, having returned from a war which murdered his sleep for the rest of his life, blind-dated a dark-haired woman in Virginia, then returned to his Indiana home and dawdled one week before he left smitten back to Virginia to beg another chance.  Another chance forever.

His family and uncles and aunts never forgave him.

Unfortunately, we haven’t changed much since that time long ago when I suffered the hushed comments of my relatives.   In the Chicago Tribune, John Kaas described his glee at Senator Elizabeth Warren’s reluctance to undergo a DNA test to reveal whether or not she had any American Native DNA present in her genes.   Senator Warren, like my brothers and our family, fell prey to the allure of our family’s apparent narration and little scientific substance except for the manufactured tales of the unaccepting family.  “Isn’t it delicious that Fauxcahontas, aka Sen. Elizabeth Warren — the liberal Massachusetts Democrat toying with a 2020 presidential run — is refusing to take a DNA test to finally prove whether her self-serving claims of Cherokee heritage are true?

Actually, watching Warren squirm and Chuck Todd all but flagellate himself for having to ask about the DNA test on “Meet the Press” was more than delicious.”

http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/columnists/kass/ct-met-elizabeth-warren-cherokee-kass-0314-story.html

Chickasha is in Grady County southwest of Oklahoma City, and my mother’s orphanage is no longer in operation, but in the early 1930’s it was populated by the unwanted offspring of Mexican laborers and Native Americans, as well as some Whites.  She was only three and her adopters chose her and my Uncle Jack, a darkly handsome Mexican boy nearly three years her elder. 

And it was just the beginning, I’m afraid.  Whenever the “family” arrived, my mother stayed present but retreated into a distant and perfunctory person who smiled little and talked less. I remember her receiving a gift for Christmas: a long, sharply honed butcher knife with two carefully cut notches in its handle.  Everyone laughed at this inside joke, but my mother’s mouth played a faint twist as if suppressing an unwanted memory.

When Trump derided Warren once more, using his usual pejorative word Pocahontas to describe her for the Native American Code Talkers of World War Two  standing before him, I was more than staggered. I was catapulted back to my own childhood bed, in my pajamas, listening to one part of the family whose susurrus of whispers derided another’s skin, another’s color, another’s refusal to accept and my own mother.

As a result, I embraced multi-ethnicity without knowing what it was; instead, just a seething resentment for those who would dismiss my mother with a judgmental and derogatory description: half-breed, Indian, Red, squaw.  And if and when they visited and came to tuck us in, I gorged my antipathy waiting for them to finish the Lord’s Prayer with some breathy, disdainful comment about my mother.

Yet, like Senator Warren, I was without any real proof, just a desire to know she was special and her blood was coursing through my veins with all the history and significance my small life lacked. 

Now, science has trumped the lure of romantic family lore.  No longer believe in your responsibility to your great-great grandmother’s legend.  Check the DNA stream. 

Kaas calls Senator Warren Fauxcahontas.  Inversely, as mean-spirited as anything I ever heard hushed to me while I drifted to sleep.  

In the end of his sad diatribe, Kaas reminds us all that we are just and more importantly all Americans.  But in this respect, he would reaffirm what his column already purports: that those honored code talkers can be insulted by an ignorant man in power (momentarily), that the honored memories of a family’s past responsibilities and  beliefs are worthless unless scientifically provable, that the Democrats’ politics of race and gender are nothing compared to what we have now, and it’s just acceptable now to make fun of a politician interested in the lives of those without advocacy.

My mother died some ten years ago, and I wrote to the District Judge of Grady County for the records of her birth.  After determining that there would be no one left alive to argue against such a release, I was provided her records.  She was white and a ward of the state of Oklahoma.  White.  

As if that ever mattered.

Digression: Report from Yellowstone

Digression: Report from Yellowstone

(I departed Illinois last month for a few weeks to travel with a very good friend and former colleague Dennis in search of sites in Western lore that had fascinated us, but for which we had never had or made the time to explore.  I reported back to my close friends and family what we learned each day.  This is just one day.) 

Bear Spray: On Sale at $49.99

The rage in Montana and Wyoming this summer is a new product called Bear Spray.  Frightening commercials jump out at you on the radio, the television, or billboards as you drive along the wilderness.  Bear Spray is supposed to stop a Grizzly when it attacks you while you are on the trail, strolling along the edge of a forest or shopping in a local convenience store.  

The ads come on in fifteen-minute intervals, and even the Park Rangers have taken up the cause by providing warning tips in their handouts before you enter the park.

From their brochure: “If you encounter a bear (common) stand your ground.  If the bear charges at you (rare) stand your ground and use bear spray.  If a bear charges and makes contact with you (very rare) fall onto your stomach and ‘play dead.’”

In the store, Bear Spray costs $50 a canister.  And the packaging clearly boasts that a man who survived a bear attack made it.  There is a ferocious image of a bear on the package, but no images of the survivor/creator.  Cosmetically, probably not a good idea.

The Park Service further suggests: “If a bear charges at you, (1) remove the safety clip, (2) aim slightly downward and adjust for wind, (3) begin spraying when the bear is 30 - 60 feet away, (4) spray at the bear so the bear must pass through the mist.”  Later on in the same information, the article describes a Grizzly Bear’s ability to burst up to speeds of forty miles per hour.  

That’s a lot to do in the three seconds you might have before something like a furry and toothy Honda Civic hits you.  Act fast!

View of Yellowstone R.

The Absaroka Inn where we are staying is named after the Crow Indians in their language and the host behind the office counter is very knowledgeable about the Grizzlies in the area.  We asked him this morning before we left if we should do something special, like buy some Bear Spray.  His name is Donald.

Donald:  There’s no point in buying that.  Bears will attack when surprised.  You just need to let them know you are coming and they will leave you alone.  In fact they will usually leave the area.

Dennis:  How can we do that?

Donald:  I sell these smaller sleigh bells.  You clip them to your belt or pants trousers and the noise will make the bear aware that you are coming.  They’ll leave.  This is very important to do if you are in bear territory. 

John:  How will we know if we are in bear territory?

Donald: You’ll see their scat.

Dennis: Scat?

Donald:  Bear poop.

Dennis:  How will we be able to tell if it’s bear poop, and not some other animals’?

Donald:  You’ll see the all the bells in it.

Seriously, we saw no bears today, but we spied just about everything else, including a 35 minute wait on the road while Rangers tried gently to coerce a herd of Buffalo bulls to move their girlfriends off the asphalt.  

We took pictures from the car.  A few people got out with tripods and photographic equipment even National Geographic would covet. to get closer.  

Like most places, people are crazy here.

Buffalo do not see very well (we learned that when we went to the Buffalo talk in Custer State Park), but they can hear and smell very well.  When you get within 70 feet of them, they will extend their long blue tongue, wag it back and forth, and grunt aggressively.  This is native Buffalo for “Back off, my friend, whatever you are.”  Dennis and I listened carefully, as bulls are over 2000 pounds and up to 10 feet at the shoulder. We stay in the car and play mute.  

Evidently an Australian visitor last week did not learn this, or he didn’t comprehend the body language, so he tip-toed up to 3 feet away to snap a big bull's picture. He’s recovering, as is the young girl prodded by her parents last week to stand next to a Buffalo lying on the ground.  Brave girl.  When Mom and Dad asked her to turn around so they could take a picture of her and the Buffalo next to her she was gored badly.  You can’t fix stupid - probably the words on the poster on the wall of the Park Rangers’ changing area.

Today, Dennis and I watched elk in herds lying on the grass. coyotes crossing in front of us, young ospreys in a nest over a canyon gorge, a white-tailed deer walking through the middle of town.  But we also saw much more.

I imagine it must have been the same for those first explorers like John Colter and David Thompson who came through the surface of a seething caldera and witnessed a geological demonstration unlike most anything else on earth.  Nearly 3500 square miles of protected land sitting atop gurgling, steaming geothermic activity.

Native American points washed up on the Yellowstone River, date back to nearly 11,000 years where we sleep tonight.  The Yellowstone River, from which the park got its name.  

There’s a scene that old Ridley Scott film “Bladerunner” (which Dennis and I both love) when the dying Replicant exclaims his parallel mortality to a persistent and ignorant mortal: “I’ve seen things you people would never believe.” 

One day, while an ambulance and several Ranger vehicles speed by us in the opposite direction to search for the remains of a 28-year-old park visitor who decided to leave the carefully constructed, protective path around the hot geysers and slip into the bubbling turbulence, we went to visit the Grand Prismatic Spring.  The spring is a bubbling geothermic kaleidoscope that produces various minerals, bacteria, and super heated water, which in turn engenders a combination of color and radiance that “you people would never believe.”  Heck, we were there and we didn’t believe it.

We arrived at Old Faithful about one half hour before it erupted.  Four tres jolie jeune filles sat down in front so we could snap pictures.  Over 4 million people visit Yellowstone National Park each year, so it should come as no surprise that many, very many are international.  Nevertheless, I was often surprised at the myriad numbers of languages encountered on even a single small path leading to something naturally beautiful. Wherever we went, languages fell about our ears from distant countries.  I greeted a woman with “bienvenu” at the artist paint pots today.  She said, “Enchante.”  I felt like a smitten diplomat.  

Finally, we wandered along the edge of the Yellowstone Canyon before coming home, standing as far as we dared along the earthquake shattered cliff face that asked us not to step any further.  We didn’t.

Going to bed tonight.  Hiking with all these bells on is exhausting.  Hoping Dennis will come back soon.  Have not heard from him or even his bells lately.