In two days, we celebrate Juneteenth, marking the date, June 19, 1865, when Union troops under the command of Major general Gordon Granger landed at Galveston, Texas, and announced that the Emancipation Proclamation, issued by Abraham Lincoln on January 1, 1863, had freed all enslaved people in those states that were in rebellion on that date. Slave holders in Texas, in order not to lose access to the uncompensated labor, had withheld that news for over two years. The holiday that I grew up celebrating as Juneteenth in Texas in the 40s and 50s, has been an official federal holiday since June 17, 2021. This June, the third official holiday, rather than picnics and ball games, I plan to spend the day in contemplation, thinking about how far we haven’t really come since June 1865.
One of the things I’ll be thinking about is the current ‘war on woke’ taking place in large parts of the United States, in particular in states where some of the most egregious violence against people of color has historically occurred. It’s impossible to turn on a radio or TV, or pick up a printed publication or read the news on line without encountering another diatribe against ‘woke,’ a term that some Republicans have co-opted and turned into something negative and threatening. Most of the people using it, like Governor DeSantis of Florida, one of those states I referred to in the previous paragraph, have no idea what it means. One of the few times I’ve agreed with something Donald Trump said was when he said, ‘Half the people can’t even define it. They don’t know what it is.” Of course, he then went on to illustrate that he was one of those people.
Woke, dear friends, has a long and very positive history, and it just another thing from Black culture that has been co-opted and misused by others. It was used in Black protest songs in the early 20th century, such as Huddle Ledbetter, better known as Lead Belly, in his 1938 song ‘Scottsboro Boys.’ It was a term meaning being ‘politically conscious and aware of the inequities in our society, like staying woke. It was also a word of warning to Black people. When in certain places, in Lead Belly’s case, Alabama, be careful and ‘stay woke’ or you might get killed.
When I was growing up being woke was a good thing. The rabid right wing has perverted it and now try to make it the scapegoat for everything that goes wrong, and to mobilize their foam at the mouth base.
As we get ready to celebrate Juneteenth, though, I’d like to commend to your attention, three Americans who in my opinion were ‘woke’, some before their time.
First, Abraham Lincoln, the so-called Great Emancipator. Now, Lincoln didn’t really believe that Black people were the social equals of Whites, but he did accord them full humanity and believed that they were entitled to freedom. His African American valet, William Henry Johnson, while referred to by Lincoln in letters as a ‘colored boy,’ when he died, Lincoln paid off the mortgage on his family’s house and sent them money. Not completely ‘woke’,’ but not asleep either.
My second ‘woke’ hero is Franklin D. Roosevelt, the only
man to serve more than two terms as U.S. President, and who suffered from polio
even while in the Oval Office. His New Deal, designed to pull the country out
of the Great Depression, was one of the first federal programs since
Reconstruction that included African Americans and probably inspired in large
part by his wife, Eleanor, he spoke out against discrimination—although, he didn’t
do as much to end segregation in government and the armed forces as he probably
could have. He did create numerous programs to help farmers and the unemployed,
Black and White, despite intense opposition from the conservative coalition, a
cabal of Republicans and Democrats in congress who opposed his ‘liberal’ New
Deal policies. Still not completely ‘woke,’ but more ‘woke’ than Lincoln, and
certainly more than the so-called conservatives.
Finally, my number-one ‘woke’ American, and all-time hero, a man who, like Lincoln, gave his life for his beliefs, the Reverend Doctor Martin Luther King, Jr., chief symbol of the American civil rights movement of the 50s and 60s until he was assassinated in Memphis, Tennessee by an avowed white supremacist, James Earl Ray.
The next time you hear some politician decrying ‘woke’ and blaming it for everything from failure of the military to meet its recruitment quotas, to unseasonable tornadoes wreaking havoc on southern trailer parks, think about these men and what they did for all of us.
Have a happy and safe Juneteenth.
