Hey New Yorkers! As you go out to celebrate #JUNETEENTH2020 today, remember a few fun facts:

1. The Mayor of NYC during the Civil War, Fernando Wood, wanted the city to secede and become independent so they could still do business w/ slave states. Fun!

2. Slaves were fully emancipated in NY in 1827, but that accomplishment took decades of abolitionist work by free black people and a group of white dudes called the New York Manumission Society (many of whom also owned slaves during this time. Fun!)

3. Also after slaves were free they still couldn’t vote bc in NY black ppl weren’t allowed to unless they owned $250 worth of land (which would be thousands of dollars today). Very few black men were wealthy enough at this time to qualify so the black vote was nearly non-existent

4. Also also, 36 years into emancipation we have the New York City Draft Riots of 1863, which began because poor whites were being forced to fight on the Union side & rich whites could pay $300 to not go. Class anger became race anger and they lynched 11 black men on our streets.

All this is to say that so much verbiage around Juneteenth erases the real work that went into achieving emancipation- it wasn’t like some White Saviors waved a wand and suddenly we were free. And New York was still a shitty place to be if you were black.

Let Juneteenth be more than a celebration. Let Juneteenth be a day where we remember how fucking long it takes for anything to change in this country, and let that memory keep us in the streets for longer than our instant gratification brains will want to be out in the streets.

I also highly recommend this great thread by @nhannahjones

https://twitter.com/nhannahjones/status/1273941034758737922?s=21 https://twitter.com/nhannahjones/status/1273941034758737922

If you liked this thread you may also enjoy my essay that takes a brief look at the history of protests and riots in NYC, and Manhattan’s forgotten black neighborhoods https://medium.com/@kyrasims_25336/making-tracks-walk-7-protest-songs-7d48dc83f4d2?source=linkShare-9092618e667b-1592575794