900 Extra Days As A Slave!

Communication Has the Power of Good and Evil

I’m reminded that each one of us has a finite number of sunrises as I’m listening to the uplifting Thanksgiving ceremony for the life of our beloved friend’s father, Retired Inspector of Police, Jamaica.

Happiest day, beloved Joy Train Rider! I love you! Bless you.

Every early morning I visualize all of us together, the picture of youth and health, radiant and whole, just like the children of God should be. I choose that thought to rise above the expression of madness in our world coming from the “highest” levels of government and people. By staying above the chaos, I expect - and see - possible solutions invisible to those immersed in the scrum.

On this Juneteenth, a federal holiday resulting from the untiring, unapologetic work of activists who found it vitally necessary, I am grateful for the opportunity to pause and reflect on what Juneteenth means.

I’m thrilled that we can visit ALL THE NATIONAL PARKS TODAY FOR FREE IN RECOGNITION OF JUNETEENTH. So I invite you on this ride of NPS Commemorations and Celebrations at the National Park Service website. Here’s the most vital point:

“Freedom was granted through the Emancipation Proclamation signed on January 1, 1863, by President Abraham Lincoln. Texas was the farthest of the Confederate states, and slaveholders there made no attempt to free the enslaved African Americans they held in bondage. This meant that President Lincoln’s proclamation was unenforceable without military intervention, which eventually came nearly 2.5 years later.”

EXACTLY 900 days!

Before Googling for the Park Service information which has ALWAYS been my rock-solid source, I saw a Facebook post on the subject from one of my most trusted friends, by Heather Cox Richardson, Juneteenth: Journey to American Democracy, who I also deeply love and trust. I moved involuntarily to repost the article, then reminded myself to read it first.

I was up to the third paragraph when I felt the first chill. I could have read that entire article without once realizing that NINE HUNDRED DAYS ELAPSED between the declaration of freedom and the time the enslaved people in Texas learned about it!

Immediately I FELT what an extra two-and-a-half years living as a slave would feel like, and what it might feel like to learn TWO-AND-A-HALF YEARS LATER that you had been free all this time, though the “humans” that held you in bondage tried everything in their power to ignore it. My mind recoiled from the bleak desolation of that thought.

Time mattered: Booker T. Washington (National Monument) remembered his mother “was standing by my side, leaned over and kissed her children, while tears of joy ran down her cheeks. She explained to us what it all meant, that this was the day for which she had been so long praying but fearing that she would never live to see." - NPS Photo