A Day for Liberty

As for the President, he’s still presenting himself as some sort of spiritual savior in a battle against evil racists intent on erasing history and banning books. This week, according to the White House transcript, Mr. Biden said:

As Kamala described earlier to honor the true meaning of Juneteenth, our entire administration is continuing the charge forward to literally redeem the soul of America . . . 

As the past few years remind us, our freedoms have been put at risk by racism that’s still too powerful a force.

You know, I was a kid in the Civil Rights Movement, and I used to think—I honestly believed that you could defeat hate. But hate only hides. It hides under the rocks. And when given oxygen—just a little oxygen—it comes roaring back out again. And we have to re- stand up and deny it the oxygen.

So Juneteenth, as a federal holiday, is meant to breathe new life into the very essence of America—(applause)—to make sure all Americans feel the power of this day and the progress we can make as a country; to choose love over hate, unity over disunion, and progress over retreat. Choosing to remember history, not erase it; to read books, not ban them—(applause)—no matter how hard some people try.

The accurate and reassuring news is that few people are trying. In the current language of the left, “book banning” doesn’t actually mean preventing something from being published but is how progressives describe the healthy phenomenon of parents opposing the use of their tax dollars to fund dishonest Marxist historians or sexually explicit texts for 8-year-olds.

What is actually hard is to try to find evidence that Mr. Biden participated in the civil-rights movement, or that he made much if any effort to recognize Juneteenth as a federal holiday during his decades in the Senate. Perhaps that was just a really busy time of year for the Delaware senator. Mr. Biden did play an important role in making June the official month of aphasia awareness.

But to his credit President Biden did sign the federal holiday into law after Rep. Sheila Jackson Lee (D., Texas) and Sen. John Cornyn (R., Texas) spent years trying to turn their state tradition into a national celebration.

In 1985 the Dallas Morning News reported:

Activities ranging from concerts and parades to barbecues and softball tournaments are scheduled in Dallas for the 120th anniversary of “Juneteenth’—the day slaves in Texas learned they had been freed.

A 1989 report in the Austin American-Statesman noted:

Slaves in the North learned they were free when the emancipation proclamation was signed Jan. 1, 1863. Black Texans, however, did not get the news of emancipation until two years later when Gen. Gordon Granger landed in Galveston on June 19, 1865, and delivered the news that ended slavery in the Lone Star State.

Austinites will celebrate the event, Juneteenth, with a parade, fireworks, outdoor concerts, picnics, storytelling, sporting events and, for the first time this year, a professional Black rodeo.

Celebrations had been going on since that glorious day in 1865, but it wasn’t until the 1980s that it was officially a state holiday. In 2015 Harvey Rice explained in the Houston Chronicle:

The city had numerous events that year. Mr. Rice added:

Galveston school children waged a letter-writing campaign to try to persuade President Barack Obama to attend that city’s celebrations, but he declined, citing a conflict.

Still, the commemoration of the event has come a long way . . . 

It sure has. And one might say that the modern era of honoring the special day began in the 1960s. In a 2005 story in the Houston Chronicle, Thayer Evans reported:

In 1965, Annie Mae Charles decided to do her part to save the Juneteenth tradition in Galveston.

Charles said she and others decided to organize Juneteenth events because there had not been any gatherings related to the holiday in Galveston the previous year.

So they decided to hold a parade and a picnic, and put out the call for donations. The Chronicle report continued:

“All I had to do was ask,” she said. “People were so nice. Coca-Cola

Attendance at the annual picnic continued to increase, and it seems that community service was something of a habit for the woman who made it all happen. Mr. Evans reported:

Charles, who became Galveston’s first black female police officer in 1960, is proud to see that Juneteenth celebrations are expanding not only in Galveston, but nationwide . . . 

Yet despite her contributions to Galveston’s Juneteenth celebration, Charles said she isn’t resting on those achievements.

“I don’t try to think about it,” she said. “I just try to help.”

She didn’t just try. She succeeded. The Galveston County Daily News reported Charles’ death in 2015. No doubt she will be fondly remembered on Monday as people in Galveston and across the country celebrate the anniversary of a great victory for liberty.

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James Freeman is the co-author of “Borrowed Time: Two Centuries of Booms, Busts and Bailouts at Citi” and also the co-author of “The Cost: Trump, China and American Revival.”

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(Lisa Rossi helps compile Best of the Web.)

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