JUNETEENTH!


The 18th of June is a big deal down here.

I remain amazed that it took so damn long for the news of manumission to permeate the South. Certainly, that taking so long was on purpose, and once the news actually arrived, there was no way to put the genie back in the bottle. But 18 months after the fact? I mean really.

Y'all know the story, right? Emancipation was decreed in 1865, but news traveled more slowly the further one got from Washington. West of the Mississippi, things were still a bit patchy, communications-wise. So enslavement continued, especially in Texas, even though the war was over and the laws had changed.

It took a while, all through the second and third week of June 1866, the weather heating to inferno levels, for the truth to arrive. And then, the public "no" newly entered the Black vocabulary.

I like to imagine the way the news traveled: on foot, via one human mouth shouting it aloud, from house to house, the jubilation and shock reverberating westward. The joy of freedom, and also its attendant terrors, must have been unbelievable. As in, it probably took a few minutes for things to sink in. And then I imagine that folks whooped out loud, and cut their eyes at each other, and gathered themselves together. And then they left. I think it's HL Gates who talks about the proliferation of freed slaves wandering the roads, after emancipation. Such wandering scared the hell out of white people, who ascribed all kinds of perfidy to that mobility. But really, folks were out there looking for one another, for their families, for their parents and children. They were trying to piece together a life.

Underneath the freeways, these roads are the same roads. Slave feet and free feet walked along them.

Here it's 98 degrees every day, with no rain, the sun unrelenting. I can't believe the heat. I can't believe the lizards in the flowers. I can't believe I just bought a fancy sundress for my brother's wedding, one that cost me some $335. I was partially talked into it because it could do double duty as a nice dress well into October here, given this seasonless clime. A girl needs summer clothes here, much more than she needs wool tights.

And I thought I could wear it also when I am invited to attend further high Black church functions with TF and his extended family. It's tough enough being the only white face in the place, but man, those church ladies know how to wear the clothes. My professor-lady skirts and well-worn Dansko sandals ain't cutting it, amidst the fancy hats and suits and shoes and handbags.

Besides, if everybody's going to keep asking if TF's rampagingly adorable nieces and nephews are our children, I best represent.