King Day is a special holiday for my black neighbors. Celebrating the achievements of Civil Rights, rededicating themselves to the work left undone. It’s a big deal.
Juneteenth needs to become just as big a day for my white neighbors.
Unlike every other holiday on the calendar, Juneteenth celebrates being late. It doesn’t happen conveniently, creating a weekend out of nothing.
Juneteenth 19, 1865 is the day when Texas slaves learned they were free. The Civil War had ended months before, but white slaveowners deliberately, universally, refused to pass the news along. It was left for Union troops, entering through Galveston Bay, to tell people they were no longer property, and to tell whites they were no longer slaveowners.
While King Day is a day focused on black achievement, Juneteenth is a day focused on white racism.
My Juneteenth Blessings
I was brought up in Massapequa, perhaps the most racist town on Long Island. We got our first black family in the early 70s, and whites burned a cross on their lawn. I didn’t know any black folks until I went to Rice University, and then it was only a few. The school had only integrated in 1966, seven years before my arrival, and that mainly for the football team.
It wasn’t until I came to my present home, in 1983, that my education began. Suddenly I became a racial minority. Nearly all my neighbors were black. Most were also lower middle class, health care workers, school janitors, carpenters.
They held the same fierce pride in themselves that any white rednecks might, but they didn’t burn a cross on my lawn. Instead, they welcomed me. They made me a neighbor, invited me into their homes. I learned the truth of what Henry Louis Gates has said, that there are nearly 42 million ways to be black in America.
Some of my neighbors were saints. One founded the DeKalb NAACP, in 1955. One was the son of slaves. Another lived like Jesus, complete with the carpentry. Yet another demonstrated the miracle of the loaves and fishes. It’s true, some were criminals. One was afflicted with PTSD from Vietnam. Others had their ambition beaten out of them by an education system that warehoused them rather than inspiring them. Most were decent, average people just trying to get along.
I raised my kids among these people. They were racial minorities, too. I don’t know if they ever recognized the blessing in that. I hope they will see it long after I’m gone.
The Message
I’m a 69 year old white man, living out his days in a gentrified neighborhood. Most of my old neighbors, the people who raised me, are gone now.
But I remember.
It angers me how many white folks in 2024 are as racist as those I grew up with in Massapequa. They see justice as a zero sum game. They see black faces as a threat.
Southern governments are doing all they can to bring back Jim Crow, segregating the schools, whitewashing the curriculum, denying voting rights, building back the prison system of the early 20th century.
Juneteenth is for them. It’s a day that brings you up short. It’s a sudden interruption of the flow. It needs to become a day for hard reflection. It’s a holiday that’s also a rebuke.
It won’t be, for most of my current white neighbors. It needs to be made one. Because we shall overcome someday. I just wish it were yesterday.
