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Juneteenth in Photos
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- sfblah 1y agoI substantially prefer the term "Emancipation Day," as it gets the point across more clearly. Lots of people don't know what "Juneteenth" means, since it's not a real word.
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- ryanmcbride 1y agoWell they've got plenty of time to learn. As far as I know most people consider Emancipation Day the day that the Emancipation Proclamation was signed into law in 1863, whereas Juneteenth marks the day 2.5 years later that the last known enslaved people were freed from the people who decided to just not tell them about the law.
- ghastmaster 1y agoThis is not true. The last slaves in the United States were set free by the thirteenth amendment in Delaware, IIRC. Emancipation Day could make sense as the last slaves freed by the emancipation proclamation took place on that date. General Order No. 3 - June 19, 1865 Thirteenth Amendment - December 6, 1865 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/General_Order_No._3#Misconceptions https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/General_Order_No._3#Misconcept... Text: A common misconception holds that the Emancipation Proclamation freed all slaves in the United States, or that the General Order No. 3 on June 19, 1865, marked the end of slavery in the United States. In fact, the Thirteenth Amendment, ratified and proclaimed in December 1865, was the article that made slavery illegal in the United States nationwide, not the Emancipation Proclamation.[6][7][8][9] Another common misconception is that it took over two years for news of the Emancipation Proclamation to reach Texas, and that slaves did not know they had already been freed by it. In fact, news of the Proclamation had reached Texas long before 1865, and many slaves knew about Lincoln's order emancipating them, but they had not been freed since the Union army had yet to reach Texas to enforce the Proclamation. Only after the arrival of the Union army and General Order No. 3 was the Proclamation widely enforced in Texas.
- lukas099 1y agoIn my opinion, we still have slaves in the USA. (In prison, as explicitly allowed by the 13th Amendment)
- ryanmcbride 1y agoInteresting thanks for the information. Regardless, people have been calling it Juneteenth for over a hundred years, it was made a national holiday as Juneteenth, I'm gonna keep calling it that.
- ghastmaster 1y agoIn Texas and maybe celebrated in other places(I haven't done the research) this is true. For a large swath of the United States it was obscure or unknown. Most of us learned about the Emancipation Proclamation though. Making Juneteenth a holiday rather than the Date of the Emancipation Proclamation is odd to me. It is as odd to me as say, celebrating Independence Day on the date the last colony got word of the signing on, hypothetically, July 5th.
- pvg 1y agoTrucktober and Frappuccino aren't "real words" but most Americans know what they mean. The unfamiliarity with Juneteenth is not due to the unrealness of the word.
- loughnane 1y agoBoth of those are portmanteau's, giving hints as to their meaning. No such thing with Juneteenth. I agree lack of familiarity isn't because it's "unreal"---we invent words all the time, but I agree with OP that we could have come up with a better name. I bet if you I were to walk down the street here and ask 10 people what Juneteenth is only 1 would be able to do better than: "something to do with freeing the slaves".
- pvg 1y agoJuneteenth is the same sort of portmanteau as Trucktober. Plus holidays have weird names. What's a Christmas, a Mardi Gras, a Festivus? It's almost entirely a matter of usage and familiarity.
- delecti 1y agoI mean, Christ Mass is also the same sort of portmanteau. And as an aside, I was curious about Festivus. Apparently it's Latin for "excellent, jovial, lively."
- pvg 1y agoYou're pre-qualified for the Feats of Strength but not, so far, for the Airing of Grievances.
- Izkata 1y agoOrigin of Festivus: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1njzgXSzA-A https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1njzgXSzA-A The writer of this episode based it on something from his family that his father did: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1oeu2cVABHg https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1oeu2cVABHg
- kreetx 1y agoWhile I'm from EU and didn't know either then Juneteenth seems to be well known enough: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Juneteenth https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Juneteenth.
- _9ptr 1y agoI'm pretty sure less than 1% of people in the EU would know what Juneteenth means. I didn't remember either. I just remembered I read it somewhere before and would have guessed it was something like pi day or star wars day.
- bilbo0s 1y agoWhy would anyone in Europe, know when the slaves in the US were freed? Or even when the slaves in Brazil were freed? Or Peru? Or Colombia? Or Cuba? I mean won't every nation have its own history and important days? And it seems to me that those days in every nation will be different. I'd even wager very few of us, (far less than 1%), know what those important days are called in other nations.
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- tenebrisalietum 1y ago- It's in a dictionary: https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/Juneteenth https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/Juneteenth. - At least one local bank website I've gone to today has a banner saying it is closed and uses the word "Juneteenth." This seems to be reasonable enough to consider it a real word. Additionally, the term "Emancipation Day" is inaccurate (and therefore obfuscatory) because slavery is still legal and constitutional if you are convicted of a crime. Emancipation doesn't accurately describe the current state unless this is no longer true. I'm going by this dictionary definition of "emancipation": https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/emancipation https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/emancipation
- _9ptr 1y agoI'm pretty sure you're making a political point but: How are criminals enslaved? Who owns them?
- ryanmcbride 1y agoThe prisons. I mean more specifically the state or federal government ultimately but the prisons more practically. The 13th amendment specifically carves out an exception to allow prisoners to be enslaved. They aren't just using political rhetoric: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Penal_exception_clause https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Penal_exception_clause You know in movies and cartoons and stuff when you'd see like, a whole bunch of prisoners in striped pajamas, chained together breaking rocks or digging ditches or whatever? Those are depictions of an enslaved workforce.
- _9ptr 1y agoForced labor for criminals isn't the same as being a slave. They are not owned by the state. We have a similar sounding exception clause in Germany, and nobody would call the prisoners slaves. That being said, I don't doubt that the american prison systems has severe problems, for example the one raised in the other answer to my previous comment.
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- lukas099 1y ago> The Black community began using the word Juneteenth for Jubilee Day early in the 1890s. [1] I thought it was a neologism until I looked it up. Turns out, I'm just white. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Juneteenth https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Juneteenth
- zzrrt 1y agoIt is an old neologism, but the style feels surprisingly modern, and/or AAVE is so dominant today that even (youngish?) white people would have coined this type of abbreviation today. > on June 19, 1866… "Jubilee Day" > The Black community began using the word Juneteenth for Jubilee Day early in the 1890s.
- downboots 1y agohttps://books.google.com/ngrams/graph?year_start=1800&year_end=2019&corpus=26&smoothing=7&case_insensitive=on&content=Juneteenth https://books.google.com/ngrams/graph?year_start=1800&year_e...
- lukas099 1y agoCool! Seems about what I'd expect for an initially illiterate, persecuted minority's culture-specific holiday.
- blackqueeriroh 1y agoJust to be clear, Africans had writing, reading, mathematics, science, medicine, and more millennia before Europeans did. [1] [1] https://www.asbmb.org/asbmb-today/science/020113/great-achievements-in-stem-in-ancient-africa https://www.asbmb.org/asbmb-today/science/020113/great-achie...
- lukas099 1y agoYes, good addition—and in case it wasn’t clear, I was talking about how most slaves weren’t allowed to learn to read or write.
- John23832 1y agoNot to be snarky, but they should just learn what it means? I could just as easily not know what emancipation means. I frankly have some family members that I'm sure don't.
- jrm4 1y agoI cannot possibly disagree with this more, "Juneteenth" is far superior. Part of it is that it absolutely invokes AAVE. It forces people to consider and be reminded of Black American culture; "Emancipation Day" whitewashes the history a little bit and gives a little too much credit to the so-called "emancipators." Let's keep this centered on Black folks, where it belongs. Invoking questions is a feature, not a bug.
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- tomluyer 1y agoYes. And those who believe everything on the internet are not igonorant. If its there it must be true!
- ok_dad 1y agoDon’t use strawman arguments mixed with sarcasm, it doesn’t help anyone. Not everything on the internet is a lie or propaganda. Wikipedia is reliable enough to lookup what Juneteenth is, if you were really curious and not just complaining about the name.
- tomluyer 1y agoTheres no straw man arugement here. The fact is everything is on the internet. Telling someone their ignorant because its on the internet is a half truth. Its like saying I graduated from Harvard and therefore I had the best education money could buy and theres no way i'm ignorant. The straw was the ignorant comment and not providing what it is why it should be celebrated by Americans.
- tempaway43563 1y agoargument about naming conventions is exactly what I expected to find on hn
- antonymoose 1y agoIt’s not just an argument of name, it’s an argument of when. Go down to Charleston, SC where the local black population celebrates Emancipation Day on January 1st and has for a long, long time. Juneteenth is in that context as artificial a holiday as Kwanza. I would imagine most other southern states have similar breaks with the Juneteenth holiday, in that it doesn’t represent the historical reality of their community.
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- acdha 1y agoYou might not have heard about it before then but it’s been celebrated since the Reconstruction era and it became a state holiday starting with Texas in 1938, making it roughly as old as Veterans’ Day.
- chgs 1y agoThank you. As a non American I have no idea what it means - only knew something was up because the us markets didn’t seem to be moving.
- pessimizer 1y agoWhy should the names of American holidays mean something to non-Americans? Would you know what Thanksgiving meant without looking it up?
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- Grimblewald 1y agoI didn't know what emancipation day is, but could have guessed and wouldn't have looked. Like you said, I have no idea what the fuck juneteenth is, and so I clicked and now know more about this facet of American history than I would have otherwise.
- justin66 1y ago> Lots of people don't know what "Juneteenth" means, since it's not a real word. The federal holiday was called "Juneteenth" because the existing celebration which it formalizes in law was called "Juneteenth." Renaming it would have been weird.
- macrael 1y agoHappy Juneteenth! A reminder that we can change as a country. May we never have to liberate by war again.
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- stirfish 1y ago>Netflix >-Content featuring the sexual exploitation of children What? Edit: I see the parent has been flagged and removed, so I assume it was nothing
- all2 1y agoThat's likely a reference to the show "Cuties" which was a rage-provocateur for awhile. I cannot make assertions about the show, only that I am passingly familiar with the internet's larger distaste for the show based on allegations of exploitation of minors.
- stirfish 1y agoOh wow, I've even seen this movie, and I didn't pick up on what they were referring to. I vaguely remember some controversy, and being unable to get worked up about it. Thanks for reminding me.
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- southernplaces7 1y ago>I just cannot believe people can just fly the confederate flag and not be thrown into prison or worse. Same with Nazis. Yeah, this is how things like freedom of expression and free speech clauses to the constitution work, they prohibit imprisoning ("or worse") people for displaying symbols of their preference, just because you don't like them, even if they're racist, as long as they're not actually committing violence against others. Does your "or worse" refer to torturing people for these things perhaps? Congratulations, you're about as shitty as any garden variety authoritarian, racist or not. We have a president doing his best to winnow down the 1st amendment against his particular brand of dislike, and on the other hand idiocies like what you demand doing it from another end. In both cases, emotionally claiming that what they want to restrict is "dangerous". >If a house divided will inevitably fall, then certainly, a house that tolerates people advocating destruction of the house will also fall. If your notion of a house divided means anyone not sharing your worldview then being imprisoned ("or worse"), it's you, or people like you who are really the problem in a country where it's exactly the kind of authoritarian bullshit you vomit that has been largely rejected by centuries of constitutional protections.
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- pedalpete 1y agoTechnically correct, but there are 1 million nicer ways to make your point. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
- almostgotcaught 1y agoYou're missing that it's a dog whistle - we should not be nice. Look at this person's adjacent comments here.
- Boogie_Man 1y agoSomeone got mad at me today because I said "we beat slavery" was I accidentally dog whistling? It's just how I thought about it. I guess "white people" did beat it but also "white people" were doing it. We kind of beat it as a country is what I meant. Idk my family wasn't even here yet but I'm just happy there isn't slavery.
- SalmonSnarker 1y agoYou are being actively obtuse here, which is understandable if perhaps you're taking almostgotcaught's comments as a direct attack on you. (which it most likely isn't) If you looked at the adjacent comments you would immediately see a combination of "western christian values," and open pondering that "Epstein is an Israeli asset. Democrats and Republicans have loyalty to Israel." This alone is enough dog whistling for at least my neighborhood's dogs to start acting up.
- moomoo11 1y agoHappy Juneteenth Idk why so many people are upset or arguing. Sorry to add to the noise but I’m a naturalized citizen here and I feel like USA has so much history of doing better and moving things forward for everyone. People all operate independently in thought here, but somehow since 1776 they have genuinely pushed society forward all things considered. Everyone acting out of self interest but in a direction where things get better, objectively speaking, makes it a good society. It is superior to living under dictatorships, corruption rotted “democracies”, or religious intolerance where the people always lose.
- slumberlust 1y agoI appreciate the external vantage point, and agree that life across the board is improving and it's tough to retain that perspective in the modern era. Equally as important is remembering that much of the progress we enjoy today was not free, but was fought and paid for in blood. It is also at risk of constant erosion and requires vigilance and consistency to push back on.
- juddlyon 1y agoThere are some wonderful photos and stories here, salute to the people at Texas Highways for putting this together. From the article: "The day was dubbed Emancipation Day but, slowly, the term Juneteenth — a portmanteau of June and 19th — took hold." Debating the name instead of appreciating the holiday and gravity of the topic is missing the forrest for the trees. Just wow.
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- nabeards 1y agoThey’re all made up.
- smeeger 1y agono they usually start with a bunch of people celebrating something. this holiday is just an underhanded way for liberals to shove their politics down the throats of the other half of the country
- blackqueeriroh 1y agoSo are Black people not people? Because we’re the ones who have been celebrating it for nigh on a century. I just want to be clear what you’re saying.
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- netrap 1y agohttps://brian.carnell.com/wiki/texas_slavery_narratives_part_2#Page_41 https://brian.carnell.com/wiki/texas_slavery_narratives_part... Fascinating story.. you know it happened but it's weird to read it and imagine it was absolutely real.