January 1st -- Emancipation Day

A New York Times op-ed essay by the Rev. Jesse Jackson yesterday taught me something I did not know -- and indicted me and other white Southerners like me in all our white privilege ignorance.

I have lived for 86 years, mostly in the South, and I did not know the significance of January 1st for the descendants of slaves -- for all of us, really.   According to Rev. Jackson (and Wikipedia agrees with him), President Abraham Lincoln announced on September 22, 1862 that slaves in states that were still in rebellion in 100 days would be freed.

Then on that 100th day, January 1, 1863, Lincoln issued the final Emancipation Proclamation that "all persons held as slaves . . . are, and henceforward shall be, free."

On December 31st, 1862, there were many black people who still had not been freed by their owners, and the anticipation and hope with which they waited for their freedom must have been almost unbearable.   Could they really believe it would happen?

According to Rev. Jackson, the night before is still commemorated in black churches as a "Watch Night," where the congregants gather to pray and sing songs of freedom, as they originally did waiting to see if Mr. Lincoln would keep his promise.   He did -- in the most significant presidential executive order ever, before or since.

Freed by presidential proclamation on January 1, 1863, it was subsequently ratified as the 13th amendment to the U.S. Constitution in 1865.

Why is January 1st not then recognized and celebrated as Emancipation Day?   We even have declared Martin Luther King, Jr.'s birthday a national holiday.    Why were we white Southerners, especially, not taught this in history classes, if nowhere else?

The gross act of owning and enforcing the labor of another person ended long ago.   But unequal rights and unequal privilege as citizens still remain throughout all strata of our society.

We're now in a phase of recognizing more and more the subtleties of white privilege, the insidious effects of unconscious prejudice, and the multiple ways in which our black citizens still do not have the same freedoms.    It shows in job statistics, in red-lining real estate unequal treatment, in voting laws that disadvantage certain groups,  in police racial profiling, and throughout our criminal justice system.

Something to think about in 2019.   And not just think about -- work to change.   Working to overturn all the voter-suppression tactics of the Republicans would be a good place to put those efforts.

Ralph