Ammendment XIII
Ratified December 6, 1865
Eight months after the official end of the civil war, on April 9 1865, congress ratified a critical amendment to the constitution.
Section 1. Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude, except as a punishment for crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted, shall exist within the United States or any place subject to their jurisdiction.
Section2. Congress shall have power to enforce this article by appropriate legislation.
This was the axe to slavery. I'd always presumed this was the day to celebrate, but wait, was there a designated day of celebration? A commemorative day to honor the end of a sad era?
June 19th might have taken you by surprise when you heard it was a federal holiday. Before it was made so by President Biden in 2021, only a slice of the nation knew its history.
June 19th is the day that enslaved African Americans were told they were free-- in the last locale that held on to slavery. Two years after the Emancipation Proclamation, two months after the south surrendered to the union, two thousand Union soldiers led by General Gordon Granger brought the good news to Galveston Texas. An hour is too long to be enslaved but the two month delay was because that's how long it took to ride to Texas.
Imagine what that must have felt like--bringing such good news.
As I try to understand the celebration of this day, I find one story that especially resonates. It is that of a school teacher and activist, Opal Lee.
In 2016, at the age of eighty-nine, Lee organized a 1400 mile march from her home in Texas to Washington DC to bring attention to June 19th. She'd planned to walk it herself, but when her family protested, she settled for 300 miles walked in 2.5 mile increments. She'd spent her life fighting for the celebration of June 19th emancipation, so when President Biden put his signature on the official declaration, Opal was there.
Today isn't just another day.
Neither is any day.
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