By Ranard Morris
June 13, 2011
As cities across our nation gear up for this year's annual Juneteenth celebration, the oldest known commemoration of the ending of slavery in America, I often wonder what freedom meant to the black men, women and children whose entire lives had been lived in servitude. Moreover, what does freedom mean 146 years later for their descendents?
On June 1, 1865, two and a half years after President Abraham Lincoln's Emancipation Proclamation, Maj. Gen. Gordon Granger announced to the last remaining slaves laboring in Galveston, Texas, that they were free. Granger was ordered to deliver General Order No. 3, which read, "The people of Texas are informed that in accordance with a Proclamation from the Executive of the United States, all slaves are free. This involves an absolute equality of rights and rights of property between former masters and slaves, and the connection heretofore existing between employer and free laborer."
As a teenager in the late 1970s and growing up in the culture of Juneteenth in Milwaukee — imagining Granger addressing this group of black slaves who had known nothing other than thankless toil — my thoughts were of a celebration of epic proportions, characterized by raucous revelry, singing and dancing. Thirty-five years later, I can only imagine what went through the minds of those uneducated, penniless and ragged black men, women and children living on that plantation in Galveston when it was announced, "You are free." Even now it is hard for me to fathom the vision of tens of thousands of the newly freed black slaves as they attempted to walk north, unaware of the frigid cold and snow that awaited them. I often wonder if their new freedom prepared them to deal with the hatred and ugliness they would encounter at the hands of a broken and vengeful confederacy, led by their former slaveholders. Where in the South were these men and women going to find employment of any kind? Despite emancipation, black men and women more than not remained on southern plantations, in turn creating the unscrupulous system of Jim Crow sharecropping. Unlike General Order No. 3, the only right awaiting the newly freed black man was the right to starve to death.
Now, 146 years later, we have a black executive presiding over this nation. But what does freedom mean to the masses of black men and women living in America? Until recently, Wisconsin lead the nation in the percentage of its black inhabitants under lock and key. Just more than 4 percent of blacks in Wisconsin, including the very old and the very young of both s*xes, are behind bars. The current crisis in black male unemployment reached a staggering 53 percent in Milwaukee last summer, forcing entire families to push even further north to seek the same elusive freedom sought by our emancipated ancestors. A 2009 report released by the National Association of Educational Progress revealed that black fourth graders in the state of Wisconsin scored poorer than any other fourth graders in the country. Moreover, just last week, statistics revealed that black students in the Green Bay School District system are graduating at a 41 percent clip, worst in the district.
The word freedom is defined as "being free from restraints." As we celebrate this year's Juneteenth commemoration, let's take time to ponder the question, what does freedom mean to you?
Ranard Morris is the lead organizer of the Redemption Project, an issues oriented empowerment group that focuses on the African American community in Brown County and is co-founder of Onesimis Project, an extended day learning program in Green Bay.
Posted By: Siebra Muhammad
Tuesday, June 14th 2011 at 11:06AM
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