What does it look like to lean into the tension of Juneteenth?
I guess it could look something like this
I learned something new when my family visited Mississippi a couple of weeks ago.1
My father-in-law was the first Black Airman in the U.S. Air Force, according to family lore. Although Air Force officials hail him as one of the first Black Airmen to serve in an all-White squadron (and sometimes the only Black Airman in the unit as a whole), racism more than came with the territory.
I knew he had served in the Air Force, and that the nine years he spent in the military had prepared him for the path ahead — to calculatedly become the first Black man to integrate into the University of Mississippi in ‘62. To lead what many historians call the last greatest march of the civil rights movement four years later.2
But somehow, I’d forgotten, or perhaps never committed to memory, that he’d also been the first Black man to adopt a motto of pursuing with wings.
Although there is more to the story, as I sat in my in-law’s living room, listening to Nana tell the tale, I could only shake my head.
Shake my head in wonder that he just kept trying, kept believing, kept putting one foot in front of another, even as hate swirled violently around him.
Shake my head in frustration at what he had to endure — even if he was the one who ultimately chose to endure it — in order to change the course of injustice.
Shake my head in grief that this particular sacrifice hasn’t fully been recognized, even today, and honored for the many ways in which it changed the world.
I guess you could say there was a lot of head-shaking going on that day.
Fast-forward a couple of weeks to today, Juneteenth. On June 19, 1865, Major General Gordon Granger read the General Order Number 3, informing the people of Texas that “…all slaves are free…” Although the Civil War had ended two and a half years earlier, the end of the war only freed those humans who had been enslaved in the Confederate States.3
Today, Juneteenth is often referred to as the Second Independence Day. It’s a day that both celebrates the end of slavery and of freedom, “the first Federal holiday to be established since Martin Luther King, Jr. Day four decades prior.”4
And as the official website recognizes, the annual celebration is a time of reflection, learning, self-assessment, and healing.5
The day is, perhaps, a time to be shaken by emotions of wonder and frustration and grief, all at the very same time.
It’s a time to hold the tension of the both/and, of celebration and grief, of hope and life, of life and death. Because just as we celebrate and honor the day, we recognize that not everything is right in the world for our Black and brown family.
Of course, some of us — read: those with White skin, such as myself — still haven’t quite figured out how to engage with the holiday. This, I surmise, is actually a very good thing: there is a realization, an understanding, and an awareness on behalf of white people that we aren’t the ones in charge. In turn, some of us are left feeling a little uncomfortable. We aren’t the ones for whom a holiday was enacted, nor are we the beneficiaries of the day’s joy.
It’s easy to turn off and disengage, to simply let the day be one to sleep in and break from work; to take a hike in the woods or finish a novel.
But all of us can reflect. All of us can learn and self-assess and move toward healing.
At a Juneteenth celebration this last weekend, my eyes grew glassy as hundreds of people in the pews uttered these words aloud together — perhaps recognizing that we haven’t always gotten it right, that we still have a whole lot of work to do.
Together, we prayed a prayer of confession:
We confess that we have failed to honor you6 in the great diversity of the human family.
We have desired to live in freedom, while building walls between ourselves and others.
We have longed to be known and accepted for who we are, while making judgments of others based on the color of skin, or the shape of features, or the varieties of human experience.
We have tried to love our neighbors individually while yet benefitting from systems that hold those same neighbors in oppression.7
As this time drew to a close, we asked for forgiveness and begged for reconciliation and hoped to someday really, truly become the beloved community.
And then, later, we celebrated. We filled our plates with meatballs and bread and cupcakes too; we swayed our hips to reggae music and clinked our glasses to those who made the earth-shattering day possible.
We called it good, shaking our heads at the new ways of wonder in that place.
Believing, perhaps, that simultaneous dualities of celebration and grief, of hope and loss, of death and life might be possible on this day.
Happy Juneteenth.
Let me be clear: I always learn something new when my family visits Mississippi. Isn’t this how it should go?
Want to know more? Google James Meredith. Or click here. Or read my first book, The Color of Life.
The “you” is God.
From “The Confession of Sin,” Juneteenth Feast Day Celebration, Episcopal Diocese of California
Thank you .