Lag Time

The "president" said n an interview with the Wall Street Journal last week that he made Juneteenth "very famous." Pretty solid Trumpian move, if not straight up white male privilege. His words were these: "I did something good: I made Juneteenth very famous. It's actually an important event, an important time. But nobody had ever heard of it." In case you missed it, this dullard is referring to the celebration on June 19th of the end of slavery. Not the Emancipation Proclamation, which had become law in the North two and a half years earlier. This was when sufficient Union soldiers landed in Galveston Texas, announcing the end of the war and carrying the charge of upholding the terms of the surrender. Slaves were free. This was, for many, the true Independence Day. 
Can I say that I learned all of that from my teachers in elementary school? Junior high? High school? College? Nope. In the version I learned in a classroom, Abraham Lincoln abolished slavery with a stroke of his pen in 1863. There was no mention of the two and a half years it took to bring about the actual release from bondage. There was no mention of how some consider that there may have been a delay imposed by those sympathetic to the "plight" of plantation owners who would have no way to bring in their cotton harvest if their labor force was suddenly unchained. That a messenger was killed en route to delivering the news and all was kept quiet until troops from the North came down to make an issue out of it. What was Abe going to do? Was he going to ride down south himself and tell loyal members to the Confederacy to knock it off? He could have been shot. 
No. It wasn't my formal education that gave me this news. It was a friend of mine with whom I worked installing office furniture. He asked me if I had plans for Juneteenth. I had no clue. He did. He and his family had a big barbecue planned and were going to spend the day educating white folks like me. Embarrassed and confounded, I took this to heart and remembered it when I moved to Oakland, where Juneteenth didn't need to be explained or "made famous" by some white guy. 
Every day is a chance to learn. Every day a new bit of information falls into our collective lap and we can choose what to do with it. There is a version of history that we need to know, and it's not the one that makes the happiest story. There is a celebration on June 19th, and it serves as a reminder to us all that we still have a long way to go. We're at least two and a half years behind.