I learned a lot from this article. Thank you!
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Como estas Chammy…
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The Reconstructions, First (post 1865) and Second (modern Civil Rights Movement) are important as well.
Think of a constant and sustained racist structure, operated by individuals who come to the table with a determined philosophy and world-view of unequal-by-“race” human populations.
And then think of the outpourings (Reconstructions and their resultant legislative efforts) of energy against the aforementioned structures.
The former can be likened to a glacier…constant and ongoing.
The latter can be likened to fits and starts
I sincerely hope that George Floyd has opened the door to the Third Reconstruction.and that this reconstruction can be more permanent than the first two.
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For more than two weeks, chaos reigned as people looted the state treasury, and no one was certain who was in charge.
And it’s been that way ever since.
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After Sheridan settled in, he said If I owned Hell and Texas, I’d rent out Texas and live in Hell.
A Texas editor replied Bully for Sheridan, and damn any man who won’t stand up for his own country.
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In reality, slavery never ended and is alive and well throughout the US. We need a New Reconstruction.
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Much of the state-sponsored racism has disappeared from common view, but much remains…
Systematic racism still prevails in many US institutions, including our health care system.
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A local historian in Galveston was writing a book about the Juneteenth Proclamation. Heard him do a presentation on it last year. Must not have been published yet. Most people don’t know how Juneteenth originated.
Except for the parts of the country where slavery was abolished long before that.
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Yes, and I’ll go further: All of Eric’s books are well worth studying.
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Can anyone sketch briefly the history of why the second paragraph of the 14th amendment was never implemented?
I had never heard about Juneteenth growing up in the north. I learned about it at St. James episcopal church in Austin Texas. The church was founded by African Americans in 1941, back when churches were still segregated.
Many the faithful were prominent African Americans in politics and business. Bertha Sadler Means was one of the church founders. She’s 101 and an amazing lady. She told me about Juneteenth
According to this, Her grandfather was born in 1828.
But even then I thought it was a Texas thing, like San jacinto day. Didn’t know it was nationally celebrated,
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A false story of Reconstruction spread by propagandists for Jim Crow segregation and disseminated in popular culture through Birth of a Nation continues to shape the national imagination.
Putting the lie to “the victors write the history”. The edition of World Book Encyclopedia I read as a child told me that the Civil War was only apparently about slavery, and that the post-war corruption was huge, and so on.
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For those, it made it a constitutional rule that could not be overturned except for a new amendment.
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Just checking in on the etiology here. It is my understanding that ‘Juneteenth’ is an absurdism along the lines of ‘the tweleventh of Julember’, meant to signify some distant date that can never come.
Am I wrong here? It may be an assumption.
Recently, I saw a clip from an old-time comedy series — mom, dad, the kids, the boss. All very happy and all lily white. What shenanigans they got into!
My point is the impression it made upon me now.
To remember an innocent child staring at a black-and-white tv at families that appeared like his own. I can assure all, there was not one parcel of racism within that child, gazing amazed at a new technology.
I am a product of Texas schools from elementary school beginning in third grade in Houston in 1958. As a young boy, I remember the ‘white’ and ‘colored’ water fountains at the Kroger owned grocery store in the Meyerland subdivision of Southwest Houston. My mother had to explain it to me when we got home.
We were required to learn, to be polite, a highly exaggerated Texas proud ‘history’ every year. I recall a literal comic book that told the glorified story of Texas. Let’s just say it was a ‘white washed’ history.
https://scoop.previewsworld.com/Home/4/1/73/1012?articleID=50418
This TPM article was a great read. Sadly, everything old is new again.
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The thing is it’s American history. American history willfully omitted so Americans who enslaved do not have to acknowledge their inhumanity towards citizens that happened to be black.
The very notion that this is “black history” underscores how much Americans refuse to own the history of the nation.
It’s sickening as we watch centuries later how the cultural wars rail against the 1619 Project and Critical Race Theory being taught in schools or universities.
That any American believes there is such a thing as “black history” is a testament to the insidious racism that continues to pervade America.
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Why Millennials Gen Zs and Xers continue to flock to Austin and environs mystifies me. You will never, ever https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/politics-news/texas-gov-abbott-signs-law-shutting-diversity-offices-public-universit-rcna89694 Y’all know you’re fucked, right? Ah, but then employment is more important than personal ethics.
Indeed. Foner’s Reconstruction is an engaging and brilliant work. I find the most startling and remarkable aspect of Foner’s work is that he wrote a large slice of US history (in one place, for the first time) himself. Somehow–fancy that happening!?–neatly all US historians (minus a few African American historians) misread, skimmed over, ignored and twisted the history of Reconstruction. Foner’s history is corrective but more importantly, it was new ground for (most) US historians. A startling achievement for any historian but also an indictment of the profession.
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