6/21/2022

Dear Friend, JRB,

            I’m not too sure what to do with myself today. I neglected to put this holiday on my work calendar, so I have scheduled some jobs for myself. Now I’m wondering if I should go ahead & do them or treat this as a day off. Perhaps you are in the same quandary.

            On federal holidays, I try to explore the significance of the day. Juneteenth is intriguing because it’s hard to imagine how 250,000 enslaved people could be kept in bondage for 2 years after Lincoln signed the Emancipation Proclamation & 2 months after Appomattox. Apparently, the Confederate Army had autonomous units that kept fighting even after Lee surrendered. As you know, POTUS Johnson could use his war powers to enforce various restraints on the South so he held on to his powers as long as he could, only declaring the war over on Aug 20, 1866, when he proclaimed, “the said insurrection is at an end & that peace, order, tranquility, and civil authority now exists in and throughout the whole of the USA." This was an overstatement because as we know formerly enslaved people were still being traumatized all over the country.

            Isn’t history complicated? As is evident with the Jan 6 hearings, each person who lived through it has a different account of what happened. It’s not surprising that the history taught in school is sanitized with a superficial focus on what happened when, rather than a deep dive into the various forces that caused people to do what they did.

I’m not sure where I am going with this, except to make the point that educating the people of America about Juneteenth is not a simple matter especially since we still have a long way to go to achieve racial justice.

            On another topic, I hope you will heed the Pope’s appeal to the International Community to not forget the Burmese people, “who still lack basic humanitarian aid and who are forced to leave their homes because - they are burned down - and to escape violence.”

            BYBS,