Few Americans know that June 19, or Juneteenth, is Independence Day for many folks of African descent.
Also known as Emancipation Day or Freedom Day, it commemorates the end of slavery, the seminal event in African-American history.
President Lincoln's Emancipation Proclamation took effect on Jan. 1, 1863, but the word did not spread instantly.
According to one account from published slave narratives of how the holiday began, the Emancipation Proclamation was read to slaves in Galveston, Texas, on June 19, 1865, more than two years after it officially went into effect. As word of the end of slavery spread, Juneteenth was created to commemorate that day.
Folklore tells why the news of freedom took so long to arrive.
One story is that slaves were intentionally kept ignorant about their freedom in order to allow crops to continue being harvested.
Another has one messenger traveling by mule from the date of the Emancipation Proclamation to deliver the news, and it simply took more than two years to arrive from Washington, D.C., to Texas.
Yet another story has the messenger being murdered before he could deliver the message.
Juneteenth has been a state holiday in Texas since 1980, and it is either an official holiday or an observed day in at least 17 other states -- Alaska, Arkansas, California, Connecticut, Delaware, Florida, Idaho, Illinois, Iowa, Kentucky, Louisiana, Michigan, Missouri, New Jersey, New York, Oklahoma and Wyoming.
LeRoy Smith thought he had hit rock bottom when he found himself trolling Atlanta's gay district, looking to exchange sex acts for a hot hit off a crack pipe. Then he wound up on a Florida farm near the small town of Hastings, being bilked blind, he says, by a man with a fifth-grade education, sweating all day for a few dirty dollars, with no way to escape from the middle-of-nowhere camp.
He did not think slavery existed in modern America. He knows better now.
The recruiters had found LeRoy Smith playing chess in a park in Jacksonville on May 1, 2010. They pegged him for a black man with a back strong enough for farm work and an addiction strong enough to stick around and work for nothing. He was hooked on crack, but he had enough sense to recognize peonage when he saw it, and to slip away by night to safety.
And now he's talking. He filed a lawsuit last month in federal court against the man he says enslaved him. And he's talking to the Tampa Bay Times in hopes that publicity will cleanse Florida of indentured servitude.
The man he accuses says it's all a lie. Confronted with the allegations, Ronald Uzzle dismissed them and told a reporter to get off his property.
There's something going on in this small town and it might be hard to care because the victims are often homeless black men who live mostly in the shadows. Many have criminal records and sins in their past.
But many served in the armed forces and lived good lives before they dropped out of society and wound up in bondage.
Authorities have failed to stop a form of slavery that begins with indebtedness and sometimes doesn't end until a worker is dead.
A billboard erected in
one of the city's most racially diverse neighborhoods featured an African slave
with the biblical quote, "Slaves, obey your masters." It lasted less than a day
before someone tore it down.
Now, the Pennsylvania Human Relations
Commission is investigating and is meeting with both the atheists who sponsored
it as well as leaders of the NAACP who found it offensive and racially
charged.
The atheists behind the sign said they were trying to draw
attention to the state House's recent designation of 2012 as "The Year of the
Bible" -- an action by lawmakers that the atheists have called
offensive.
But there were concerns that erecting such a billboard is
playing with fire.
Parents of students at Camp Creek Elementary School in Lilburn, Ga., are
outraged after a 3rd-grader told her mother about a "slave game" students had
been instructed to play, station WSBTV reports.
"It was kind of like tag, but we were slaves and slave catchers," mother
Ericka Lasley said her daughter told her, the station reports.
Another parent, Charvia Rivers, says her children reported the same thing,
but Gwinnett County Schools spokesman Jorge Quintana told the station that a
district investigation found that the teacher did not organize the game.
About two dozen Tea Party activists held a news
conference recently and then met with lawmakers individually to present their
list of priorities and "demands" for the 2012 legislative session, according to
Think Progress.
The proposals calls for lawmakers to amend state laws governing school
curricula and for textbook-selection criteria to require that "no portrayal of
minority experience in the history which actually occurred shall obscure the
experience or contributions of the Founding Fathers, or the majority of
citizens, including those who reached positions of leadership.”
Former Mississippi Gov. Haley Barbour said Friday he's "very comfortable"
with his final-days decisions to grant pardons or other clemency to more than
200 people, including convicted killers — decisions that outraged victims'
families and dismayed even some of his most devoted supporters.
Barbour, a Republican who had considered but decided against running for
president this year, said that 189 of the people who got pardons or other
reprieves had already been released from prison before his actions. Only 10, he
said, have been or will be fully released from prison, while several with
expensive, chronic conditions are receiving medical leave.
"I am fully confident the pardons and other clemency I have given are all
valid," Barbour told reporters at a news conference, his first on the subject,
at the Jackson-area law firm where he now works.
Barbour granted pardons and other reprieves in his final days before leaving
office after two terms Tuesday. Five inmates who had worked as trusties at the
Governor's Mansion — four of them, convicted of murder — were released last
weekend. One of the freed men had fatally shot his estranged wife as she held
their baby in 1993 and then shot her male friend in the head; the friend
survived.
Barbour initially declined to comment on the pardons or to provide detailed
information about how many of those receiving them were still in prison. He then
issued a statement after leaving office, after the pardons had generated a
firestorm of criticism.
By the time state corrections officials said Wednesday that 21 on the list
were still in custody, state Attorney General Jim Hood was calling the pardons
"shameful" and questioning whether Barbour had violated the state constitution
by not ensuring inmates gave enough public notice about their possible
release.
Hood, the only statewide Democratic officeholder in Mississippi, also
persuaded a state judge to temporarily block release of the 21 still in custody.
State corrections officials said Friday they would start to release 13 of the 21
inmates because the 13 were given medical discharges and weren't bound by the
same public notice requirements before release.
Barbour on Friday reiterated that it's a tradition in Mississippi for
governors to free trusties who worked at the Governor's Mansion. And the former
governor said he's not concerned that the freed trusties might harm anyone.
"I have absolute confidence, so much confidence, that I let my grandchildren
play with these five men," Barbour, 64, said of the trusties freed this
week.
He said the Mississippi Department of Corrections picks inmates who work at
the Governor's Mansion. Typically, they are men who committed crimes of passion.
Corrections officials assign them, he said, because they are not likely to
commit another violent crime and make good workers.
Records show Barbour gave "full, complete and unconditional" pardons to 203
people, including 17 convicted of murder, 10 convicted of manslaughter, eight
convicted of aggravated assault and five convicted of drunken-driving incidents
that caused deaths.
He granted some sort of reprieve to 26 inmates who were in custody — 10 full
pardons; 13 medical releases; one suspension of sentence; one conditional,
indefinite suspension of sentence; and one conditional clemency.
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