Some things worth remembering on Juneteenth: Texas’ size and isolation allowed slavers to keep knowledge of Emancipation from the enslaved. Large slaveholders in coastal areas also moved enslaved people around the state to avoid the Union Army & therefore Emancipation.

The confederate states fought a war for the right to own human beings but Texas fought *two* wars for this reason. Conflict over American whites bringing enslaved black people into Mexico, which had abolished slavery in 1829, was a factor in Texas seceding in 1845.

The Texans were hardly alone in their attempts to stall Emancipation. When Northern states began abolishing slavery after the Revolutionary War, slaveholders would wait until shortly before the last day of legal slavery and then sell their Negroes to buyers in slave states.

In other instances slavers simply moved across state lines, taking enslaved people out of a territory where Emancipation was occurring to one where slavery was protected. French slaveholders did the same thing in Haiti during the Revolution, taking slaves to Louisiana.

Texas efforts to stall freedom were not unique, they were part of a bigger pattern. There are lots of Juneteenths. Finally it’s worth noting that the order of Emancipation delivered on 6/19/65 also ordered black people to continue to work the same “jobs” they did as slaves.

The order also warned them that “idleness” would not be tolerated, reflecting Northern/Federal concerns about what freedom for black people meant practically.

Mitch McConnell pointed to the civil war as a kind of reparations for black people. But everywhere that freedom came it reflected the prerogatives and interests of powerful white people. Emancipation came 2.5 years late. Equality is 156 years late and counting.