Soapbox
JUNETEENTH REFLECTIONS
Celebrating the partial victories
Bertrand Cooper
Speech to the Young, Speech to the Progress-Toward Say to them, say to the down-keepers, the sun-slappers, the self-soilers, the harmony-hushers, “Even if you are not ready for day it cannot always be night.” You will be right. For that is the hard home-run. Live not for battles won. Live not for the-end-of-the-song. Live in the along. Gwendolyn Brooks
There are all sorts of black folks, each of them authentically black. What I take from the national holiday of Juneteenth is an extension of the black folks who raised me, who were poor and lower working class. Those folks had only holidays and cookouts and weekends to recuperate from their lives before having to get back to it. I think a holiday celebrating the emancipation of black Americans is incomplete without an acknowledgement of the value of giving oneself over to joy for a day before returning to the fight. I think that is also the aspect of the holiday that anyone advocating for something can bring to their own life.
Emancipation was a great victory, but still a partial one. Juneteenth, when the Union Army arrived in Galveston to enforce emancipation, was a great victory, but still a partial one. Yet to come were faltering attempts at Reconstruction, Reconstruction’s defeat, and then the long, dark reign of Jim Crow, and the difficult fight for civil rights and equal citizenship. What Juneteenth offers, and what I want to emphasize, is that the celebration of partial victories is necessary, not distracting, shameful, or superfluous.
One frequently encounters the celebration of partial victories in, for example, videos of black parents, whose accent and manner denote the life and culture of the poor and lower working classes, cheering without restraint for a black girl or boy who has just graduated kindergarten or middle school. From the intensity of the adulation, you would think they had graduated college. And yet this moment of celebrating small progress is buttressed in time by every hardship society has let that child face and every hardship they'll be made to face on the way to college. Nonetheless, the people who wade through oppression at its thickest still think it worthwhile to celebrate a partial victory over an education system that rarely serves them.
Juneteenth is an American celebration that uniquely expresses a central aspect of the African American spirit—not to let tragedy prevent the possibility of joy nor to let a small measure of justice satisfy what is meant to be the fulfillment of its entire promise. On January 1, 1863 the Emancipation Proclamation declared the end of slavery in the Confederate States. By regrettable and shameful design, this did not end slavery in the whole of the U.S. but only in those states that had seceded. (Maryland, Delaware, Kentucky, Missouri, Tennessee and portions of Virginia and Louisiana were exempt.) Further hindering the delivery of this partial freedom, emancipation was unenforceable in states where the Confederacy remained in control. It was not until June 19, 1865 that the 250,000 black Americans enslaved in the state of Texas gained the freedom that had been promised to them seven hundred and thirty days prior.
To be there in Galveston Bay that day to see the end of a condition of bondage that had brutalized, degraded, and cut short the lives of your parents, your grandparents, and then did the same to you before threatening to do it again to your children—what it must have felt like to see those 2,000 Union troops on the horizon or to wake up on the morning of June 20th is beyond comprehension.
It is in celebration of that indescribable joy and that new, more promising reality that June 19th is honored as “Juneteenth,” “Freedom Day,” “Emancipation Day,” “Black Independence Day,” or “Jubilee Day.” Black Americans, and indeed all Americans who truly loved freedom, were rightfully jubilant. But in keeping with the spirit of black folks, as much as one must celebrate progress, a partial freedom is unacceptable. It is necessary to celebrate progress, but not to stop pushing for what is right. Newly freed black Americans in union with white abolitionists kept pushing until the Thirteenth Amendment abolishing slavery and involuntary servitude “except as a punishment for crime” was ratified on December 6th, 1865.
Juneteenth is an opportunity to celebrate, learn, and participate in black American history, not unlike Black History month, but with an additional encouragement to celebrate the small progress and partial victories made in the fights that matter to you. Find joy in what you’ve done, recover, and keep pushing forward because there’s still six months left in the year to do good for others. For this reason, we are proud to celebrate Juneteenth.
To learn more about the history, food, and festivities of Juneteenth, check out this Smithsonian Toolkit.
Bertrand Cooper, M.Ed., is a writer and education professional based in Los Angeles. Drawing on twenty six years of deprivation and a Master’s in Education Theory and Policy, his writing explores the depictions of poverty in society. Currently, he is writing a book on popular culture and class divisions among black Americans. Bert’s previous publications have appeared in venues such as Current Affairs (“Who Actually Gets to Create Black Pop Culture?”), Dissent (“To Hell with Poverty”), The Atlantic (“The Failure of Affirmative Action”), and New York Times (“I Escaped Poverty, But Hunger Still Haunts Me”). Follow him on X.
Thank you for this. The recent celebration of the 80th anniversary of D-Day is another example; a great victory, but the war was not over.
Partial victories are the things that give you the hope and stamina to keep fighting for the full ones.