Traveling through Juneteenth
Juneteenth, June 19th, on June 17th, 2021, became a Federal Holiday in the United States when it was passed by Legislation in Congress and signed by President Joe Biden.
Juneteenth is the oldest nationally celebrated commemoration of ending slavery in the United States. Dating back to 1865, on June 19th, the Union soldiers, led by Major General Gordon Granger, landed at Galveston, Texas, with news that the war had ended and that the enslaved were now free. Note that this was two and a half years after President Lincoln’s Emancipation Proclamation - which had become official on January 1st, 1863. Two hundred fifty thousand enslaved people in Texas were already free—but none of them knew it, and no one was in a rush to tell them.
In reality, the Emancipation Proclamation freed enslaved people in name only.
Not all enslaved people were freed instantly.
Texas is a large state, and General Granger’s order (and the troops needed to enforce it) was slow to spread. According to historian James Smallwood, many enslavers deliberately suppressed the information until after the harvest, and some beyond that. In July 1867, there were two separate reports of enslaved people being freed and one report of a Texas horse thief named Alex Simpson, whose enslaved people were only freed after his hanging in 1868.
Freedom created other problems.
Despite the announcement, Texas enslavers were not too eager to part with what they felt was their property. Many were beaten, lynched, or murdered when freed people tried to leave. “They would catch [freed slaves] swimming across [the] Sabine River and shoot them,” a former enslaved person named Susan Merritt recalled.
Juneteenth did not mean immediate freedom for everyone. Enslaved people in Native American territories had to wait another year for freedom.
Slavery in Native American territory
The first step in abolishing the institution of slavery started with President Abraham Lincoln’s signing of the Emancipation Proclamation on January 1st, 1863. The proclamation freed enslaved people in the Confederate states, but not those in the states that formed a border between the North and South. Slavery existed in two border states, Delaware and Kentucky, for nearly six months after Juneteenth because their state legislatures rejected the Thirteenth Amendment after Congress passed it in January 1865.
The following significant milestones came with the end of the Civil War in April 1865 and the December 1865 ratification of the Thirteenth Amendment, which banned slavery from any place “within the United States, or any place subject to their jurisdiction.”
But Native American nations were not subject to U.S. jurisdiction in the matter of slavery. After 1865, 10,000 people remained enslaved among five prominent tribes – the Cherokee, Chickasaw, Choctaw, Creek, and Seminole.
“One of the tricky parts of this history is that, on the one hand, both Native Americans and people of African descent are subjected to this colonial domination,” said Barbara Krauthamer, a history professor at the University of Massachusetts. “But then there is also this history of Native Americans making economic and political decisions to participate in that institution of chattel slavery and acquire black people as property as slaves.”
Native Americans adopted Black chattel slavery from Europeans as early as the 1500s, said Alaina Roberts, a University of Pittsburgh history professor. But these five specific tribes began assimilating into European-American culture in the late 1700s, including owning slaves as a way to accumulate wealth, she said.
The purpose and value of slaves in Native American territory were similar to those enslaved in the Deep South. Roberts said that men were used for agricultural labor – planting crops, tending the cotton fields, and herding livestock. Women performed household duties – cooking, cleaning, washing, and some garden work.
Slavery in Native American territory
The first step in abolishing the institution of slavery started with President Abraham Lincoln’s signing of the Emancipation Proclamation on January 1st, 1863. The proclamation freed enslaved people in the Confederate states, but not those in the states that formed a border between the North and South. Slavery existed in two border states, Delaware and Kentucky, for nearly six months after Juneteenth because their state legislatures rejected the Thirteenth Amendment after Congress passed it in January 1865.
The following significant milestones came with the end of the Civil War in April 1865 and the December 1865 ratification of the Thirteenth Amendment, which banned slavery from any place “within the United States, or any place subject to their jurisdiction.”
But Native American nations were not subject to U.S. jurisdiction in the matter of slavery. After 1865, 10,000 people remained enslaved among five prominent tribes – the Cherokee, Chickasaw, Choctaw, Creek, and Seminole.
“One of the tricky parts of this history is that, on the one hand, both Native Americans and people of African descent are subjected to this colonial domination,” said Barbara Krauthamer, a history professor at the University of Massachusetts. “But then there is also this history of Native Americans making economic and political decisions to participate in that institution of chattel slavery and acquire black people as property as slaves.”
Native Americans adopted Black chattel slavery from Europeans as early as the 1500s, said Alaina Roberts, a University of Pittsburgh history professor. But these five specific tribes began assimilating into European-American culture in the late 1700s, including owning slaves as a way to accumulate wealth, she said.
The purpose and value of slaves in Native American territory were similar to those enslaved in the Deep South. Roberts said that men were used for agricultural labor – planting crops, tending the cotton fields, and herding livestock. Women performed household duties – cooking, cleaning, washing, and some garden work.
Union soldiers stationed in Native American territories believed slavery did not compare to chattel slavery that existed in the South.
“It was a consensus of opinion among the white troops who had been with the Indians nearly a year, that slavery of the negroes ... had been only in name,” Wiley Britton, a civil war soldier, wrote in his book, The Union Indian Brigade in the Civil War.
Slave narratives, however, tell both sides of the story. Many slaves talked about their masters’ kindness, while others shed light on the brutal side, including beatings and rapes.
“Old Master Frank never worked us hard and we had plenty of good food to eat,” Kiziah Love said of her Choctaw owner, Frank Colbert.
Nevertheless, Prince Bee, a formerly enslaved person in Native American territory, described his brother’s brutal beating when he tried to run away, which left him blind in one eye.
“The old Master whipped him ‘til the blood spurted all over his body, the bull whip cutting in deeper,” he recalled. ”He finish up the whipping with a wet coarse towel, and the end, got my brother in the eye.”
Native American nations existed as autonomous political entities, which gave them the right to their own self-government. Neither the Emancipation Proclamation nor the Thirteenth Amendment applied to their territories.
It was not until the spring and summer of 1866 that the five tribes agreed to the final terms of their respective treaties with the United States, officially ending slavery in Native American territories, Krauthamer said.
Love told a Federal Writers’ Project worker in 1937 that she shouted to the heavens when she learned she was a free woman in 1866.
“I was glad to be free,” the 93-year-old woman said. “Well, I jest clapped my hands together and said, ‘Thank God Almighty, I’se free at last!’ ”
It was not until the spring and summer of 1866 that the five tribes agreed to the final terms of their respective treaties with the United States, officially ending slavery in Native American territories, Krauthamer said.
Love told a Federal Writers’ Project worker in 1937 that she shouted to the heavens when she learned she was a free woman in 1866.
“I was glad to be free,” the 93-year-old woman said. “Well, I jest clapped my hands together and said, ‘Thank God Almighty, I’se free at last!’ ”
Native American nations existed as autonomous political entities, which gave them the right to their own self-government. Neither the Emancipation Proclamation nor the Thirteenth Amendment applied to their territories.
It was not until the spring and summer of 1866 that the five tribes agreed to the final terms of their respective treaties with the United States, officially ending slavery in Native American territories, Krauthamer said.
Love told a Federal Writers’ Project worker in 1937 that she shouted to the heavens when she learned she was a free woman in 1866.
“I was glad to be free,” the 93-year-old woman said. “Well, I jest clapped my hands together and said, ‘Thank God Almighty, I’se free at last!’ ”
Moreover, despite the legal end of slavery, white Southerners swiftly enacted racist “Black Codes” laws that restricted Black people’s freedom for decades to come.
Black Codes and convict leasing
After the end of the Civil War on April 9th, 1865, and the April 14th assassination of Lincoln, the task of reconstructing the South fell to President Andrew Johnson. He essentially allowed Southern states to reconstruct themselves.
In May 1865, Johnson pardoned former Confederate officials who were willing to pledge allegiance to the United States. This allowed them to regain political power in the South almost immediately after the war. Instead of including newly freed people in the new order, Southern politicians set about restoring elements of the old order.
Southern states instituted a series of oppressive laws, called “Black Codes,” that restricted Black people’s freedom of movement and gave white Southerners the legal justification to continue wringing forced labor out of Black people.
The Black Codes varied across Southern states. African Americans had to sign annual labor contracts with white landowners. An 1865 Mississippi statute gave the courts the power to imprison any Black adult who did not have “lawful employment” by the second Monday in January of each year.
Other Southern states, like South Carolina, mandated that all Black employees were designated “servants” and employers were “masters.” One Louisiana parish passed a Black Code that required “every negro ... to be in the regular service of some white person, or former owner, who shall be held responsible for the conduct of said negro.”
“These were laws designed to make sure African Americans could not fully exercise their freedom,” said Michael Ross, a history professor at the University of Maryland.
It was a crime for a Black person to carry a firearm, drink alcohol, or gather in small groups past sundown, Ross said. By enforcing these racist and petty laws, Southern states could wrangle thousands of Black people into the justice system.
Juneteenth did not mark the end of slavery.
Contrary to popular opinion, Juneteenth did not mark the end of slavery. In the Confederate states, slaves had been emancipated; however, slaves in the Union territory had to wait until December 6th, 1865, before they were legally free. In Texas, the legal status of “freedom” of enslaved people was given to formerly enslaved people in court decisions between 1868 and 1874.
Written by Audrey Perry Williams
