Juneteenth - A Day of Jubilee

Juneteenth is the annual holiday celebrating the end of slavery in the United States, and commemorates the day when news of their emancipation finally reached the slaves that were held in the deepest parts of the Confederacy. Although the holiday is well known in some parts of the country, many of us are simply unaware of what the holiday celebrates and why it is so significant to many of our fellow citizens.

On June 18, 1865, General Gordon Granger arrived in Galveston, TX with 1,800 Union soldiers to occupy Texas and enforce the laws of the Federal government.  The following day, on June 19^th, General Granger went out on the balcony of a large home in Galveston and read out multiple General Orders establishing the military authority in the area and setting up the provisional government and its laws.  Among the orders read by General Granger was General Order No. 3:

“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 personal rights and rights of property between former masters and slaves, and the connection hereby existing between them becomes that between employer and hired labor. The freedmen are advised to remain quietly at their present homes and work for wages. They are informed that they will not be allowed to collect at military posts and that they will not be supported in idleness either there or elsewhere.”

General Granger’s announcement electrified the now former slaves who spontaneously began celebrating their freedom with prayer, singing, and general rejoicing.

A year later, the freedmen in Texas organized the first “Jubilee Day” celebration to commemorate General Granger’s announcement.  The celebration on June 19^th became an annual tradition, with former slaves and their families gathering in their finest clothes to celebrate their freedom with religious services, the singing of traditional spirituals, readings of the Emancipation Proclamation and General Order No. 3, and plenty of the families’ best cooking to share and enjoy with their neighbors.  As the years passed, Jubilee Day became known by several different names, including Freedom Day, Ce-Liberation Day, Emancipation Day, and the name it is known by today – Juneteenth.

Early Juneteenth observances were church-centered celebrations that doubled as opportunities for the freedmen to learn how to exercise their new rights, such as the right to vote, and to organize schools and other institutions designed to improve their lives.

As former slaves in Texas began exercising their freedom to move about the country, many returned to the states they had been dragged from to look for their families and loved ones that had been left behind.  Others migrated to northern states, or out west.  Wherever they went, the tradition of Juneteenth went with them, and Jubilee celebrations began spreading throughout the nation.

Like the struggle for civil rights, Juneteenth celebrations have also faced obstacles imposed by bigotry and racism.  Many cities prohibited African-Americans from gathering together in public parks and facilities.  In those cities the Black community celebrated Juneteenth on river banks, or by lakes away from town.  In some cities, Black citizens pooled their resources to purchase land and create their own parks.  Historic Emancipation Park in downtown Houston, TX, was originally purchased by members of the Black community in 1872 as a place to hold their annual Jubilee Day celebrations. 

In the years since General Granger read General Order No. 3, the number of Juneteenth celebrations have increased or diminished depending on what has been happening in the country.  Some eras in particular, such as the end of Reconstruction and the Great Depression, saw fewer communities celebrate Juneteenth. Other eras, such as the 50’s and 60’s, saw a regular increase in Juneteenth celebrations as African-American GI’s returned from World War II, and the Civil Rights movement grew and gathered momentum.  In the late 1970’s, the Texas Legislature declared Juneteenth a “holiday of significance,” and in 1980 Texas became the first state to declare Juneteenth a State Holiday.  Today 47 states and the District of Columbia officially acknowledge Juneteenth.

June 19, 1865 marked the end of slavery as a legal institution in the United States of America.  It also marked the beginning of the long and tortuous road that African-Americans have walked over the past 155 years to get the equal rights that are their due as free men and women. Juneteenth is not just a celebration of freedom from slavery, it is a call to continue the struggle for civil rights until everyone is valued for who they are, not what they look like.  It is a day to reflect on how we regard and treat our fellowman, and to break off any chains of bigotry and prejudice that may still bind our own hearts.

Happy Juneteenth!

Where Can I Turn For Peace?

Peace seems to be a rare and precious commodity in our world today and the questions asked by the first two verses of the hymn, Where Can I Turn for Peace?, seem to be especially appropriate:

Where can I turn for peace? Where is my solace?

When other sources cease to make me whole?

When with a wounded heart, anger, or malice,

I draw myself apart, searching my soul?

Where when my aching grows, where when I languish,

Where in my need to know, where can I run?

Where is the quiet hand to calm my anguish?

Who, who can understand? He, only one.

-       Hymns 129

The answer to the pressing need for peace in our lives is to draw near to the Savior, not just by reading the scriptures and praying, but by finding other ways to bring Him into our lives. Several days ago a member of my ward posted an inspiring video of her and her fellow Young Performing Missionaries singing a beautiful song called “Invocation.” The song takes its text from Matthew 18:20 – the Lord’s promise that “…where two or three are gathered in my name, there am I in the midst of them.” (The video can be found HERE). Although we miss gathering to worship together on Sundays with our fellow congregants, we can each draw on the Lord’s promise to feel his presence when we gather to worship Him in our homes.

 The Lord’s promise to be in our midst is not just restricted to formal worship services either.  Anytime we gather together with someone else with a desire to lighten their burdens - whether it be in our homes, through a phone call, a text message, or an online meeting – we qualify to have him be with us. In fact, whenever we do anything to serve another person we are doing the Lord’s work and he will smile upon us and magnify our efforts. The peace we will feel from spending this time with our Savior, however small the gathering, can carry us through the difficulties we face in these uncertain times.

And why do we want to have the Savior in our midst? Because there is nobody that is as intimately acquainted with our trials and difficulties as he is, and he knows how to mend us!  The third verse of Where Can I Turn for Peace? speaks eloquently of the help He provides us:

He answers privately, reaches my reaching,

In my Gethsemane, Savior and friend.

Gentle the peace he finds for my beseeching,

Constant he is, and kind, love without end.

Shortly before going to Gethsemane and facing the awful agony of the atonement, our Savior gave his apostles these beautiful words of comfort:

            “These things I have spoken unto you, that in me ye might have peace.  In the world ye shall have tribulation: but be of good cheer; I have overcome the world.” John 16:33

I testify that Christ has overcome the world, and that he is the Prince of Peace as a result. He knows our needs, and he will heal us as we reach out to help and heal those who are hurting around us. I know that as we strive to be kind in the way that we address each other, respond to each other, and serve each other we will find that the greatest healing will come into our own hearts.

May the Lord grant all of us the peace we are longing for as we work together to lift each other up.

Memorial Day 2020 - Remembering the Fallen

Ever since I became a Scout leader I wanted a flagpole so our family could raise and lower a flag in our front yard.  Specifically, I wanted us to be able to participate in our nation’s annual tribute to its fallen by flying the flag at half-staff on Memorial Day.  So, shortly before Memorial Day in 2001, we purchased a flagpole and installed it on our front lawn.  On Memorial Day that year we felt greater reverence for our country’s honored dead as we performed this small ceremony at home for the first time.

A little over 3 months later we watched the TV in horror as the second plane flew into the World Trade Center in New York City. I quietly went outside and lowered our flag to half-staff, and then my family gathered together to pray for our country and our brothers and sisters in New York, Virginia, and Pennsylvania.  We felt solidarity with our fellow citizens as flags came out across the nation to acknowledge the terrible loss and express our resolve that this outrage would not go unanswered.  We were all changed by that September day.

In February of 2002 I was given the opportunity to fulfill a lifelong desire to visit Washington D.C. and took some time to visit Arlington National Cemetery.  I felt a solemn reverence come over me as I walked to the Tomb of the Unknowns.  As I looked out over the silent, snow-covered landscape, I was impressed by the awful arithmetic of freedom – conveyed by row after row of pure white headstones stretching as far as the eye could see in all directions. I left with a resolve to never take my freedom for granted, and have strived to live up to that inner commitment in the years that followed.  Memorial Day after visiting Arlington was different for me.  I had seen some of the price of my freedom quantified, and it changed me.

At the end of last year I went on a business trip to Baltimore, and took the time to drive to Gettysburg and spend the day touring the battlefield.  I have read multiple volumes on the Civil War, and countless chapters in those books are devoted to the battle at Gettysburg.  I thought I had an idea of what to expect there – but I was unprepared for the emotions I felt.  The size of the battlefield, the sweltering heat, the marches and countermarches, the ferocity of the fighting and the sheer numbers of soldiers who fought and died all over that ground were almost incomprehensible.  Words fail me. Even now, words fail me as I remember that day.

Later that afternoon, I toured Fort McHenry in Baltimore.  Although I felt a reverence there, I was still so overwhelmed by what I had felt at Gettysburg that I didn’t fully appreciate where I was walking.  The next day I went back to Fort McHenry to briefly fly a flag over the Fort that I could take home with me.  On the second visit, I felt what I was expecting to feel in that hallowed place.  I marveled at the tenacity of Fort McHenry’s defenders as they endured the unremitting bombardment of the mightiest military in the world at the time. I was grateful for the patriotic defiance they demonstrated as they raised a larger flag the following morning so the whole world could see “that our flag was still there.” I was inspired, and the flag I brought home with me is a precious reminder of what I felt there.  My storehouse of gratitude for the sacrifice of others grew.  I was changed by what I felt there.  I will remember the feelings from that trip as we observe Memorial Day this year.

In spite of how these visits and these experiences have increased my feelings of gratitude for my freedom, they pale in comparison to the experience that lives with our family every day.

On March 12, 2010 my dad called to let me know that my cousin, SFC Jake Whetten, had been killed by an IED in Afghanistan earlier that day.  When I hung up the phone I immediately walked out of my house and lowered the flag in our front yard to half-staff to honor Jake and the ultimate sacrifice he had just made.  The next few days were full of emotion as we gathered with Jake’s family to receive his body at Luke AFB and then participate in his funeral services – complete with the full military honors due to one who has lost his life in combat.  Jake’s mother, Aunt Amy, requested that my siblings and I sing America The Beautiful at his funeral.  Somehow we all made it through the song without breaking down, but in the past 10 years I have never been able to sing the third verse of that beautiful song without breaking down and crying:

Oh, beautiful for heroes proved

In liberating strife,

Who more than self their country loved,

And mercy more than life!

Our family was changed by Jake’s sacrifice, and Memorial Day that year took on a meaning that was orders of magnitude deeper than it was for us only the year before.  Memorial Day in 2010 – ten years ago – and every Memorial Day since then has been different, because we were all changed by Jake’s sacrifice.  We saw, firsthand, the indescribable grief felt by Jake’s daughter, his mother, his brother and sisters, his fiancé, and all of the members of his extended family who gathered to honor him that day.  We felt overwhelming sorrow ourselves at all that was lost when Jake was killed.  The Hall of Heroes is no longer an anonymous and faceless concept to us.  It now contains someone we knew and loved and respected – someone we watched grow up.  We came face-to-face with the true cost of freedom, and how that price is not only extracted through the life of the soldier that is lost, but in the grief and loneliness and sorrow and regret that is left behind in its wake.  The price is borne by those left behind who carry the heavy burden of an unwanted honor.

God bless them, and the memory of their loved ones!  May the “peace that passeth all understanding” be theirs as we all reflect on their sacrifice this weekend!