Connect the Dots 101

The day after Juneteenth 1865 was still another day at the office for the half million still-enslaved people in Delaware, Kentucky, Maryland and Missouri, as well as the 300,000 living in Tennessee; fifty-five counties and two cities in Virginia; plus thirteen parishes in Louisiana and New Orleans —all of which were exempt from the provisions of the Emancipation Proclamation.

As Civil War expert Eric Foner and mainstream historians have long pointed out, “Lincoln didn’t actually free any of the approximately 4 million men, women and children held in slavery when he signed the Emancipation Proclamation on January 1, 1863.” 

It wasn’t until December 7, 1865—the day after the ratification of the 13th Amendment which actually abolished slavery—that all of those people (plus enslaved people in California, Oregon and New Jersey) could lay down their tools, walk away from their assigned tasks and legally say “thanks, but no thanks” to the prospect of living out their remaining days as enslaved people.

That there is no national significance to the original Juneteenth—when Union troops informed the enslaved population of Galveston Texas of its emancipation—made it a particularly poor choice for a national holiday, especially in the wake of the murder of George Floyd and a nationwide reconsideration of the role of race in America.

Historical and geographical illiteracy among Americans is a staple of late-night comedy shows. (When was World War II? Where is the Mississippi?) It was considered good news when the 2020 Annenburg Constitution Day Civics Survey showed that barely half of Americans (51%) were able to name the three branches of the federal government. That was an improvement over the 39% who were able to do so the year before. 

Small wonder then, that 92% of the high school seniors surveyed by the Southern Poverty Law Center in 2017 did not know that slavery was a central cause of the Civil War. 

Or that over a third believed incorrectly that the Emancipation Proclamation, not the 13th Amendment, ended slavery. 

The creation of Juneteenth as a federal holiday has robbed America of a golden opportunity to enlighten a poorly-educated public and properly integrate the African American experience into an honest, accurate American history.

But here’s thing— an honest, accurate interpretation of American history is recognized as a distinct disadvantage for some.

Unfortunately for today’s Republican Party and for reactionary Democrats, racism is a bad look. There is no version of the American story in which slaveholders, Confederates, domestic racial terrorists, Dixiecrats, segregationists and the party of Trump are the good guys. 

When Chinese demonstrators at Tiananmen Square displayed signs reading “We Shall Overcome,” the whole world got it. Republicans too.The GOP spin machine continues to mischaracterize the legacy of Dr. King but his core mission remains unassailable. He was on the right side of history.

No amount of faulty historical revisionism will ultimately prevail, but in the short-term, why not give it a try?

Trumpists have successfully spun and redacted themselves away from what in a normal world would have been the fatal fallout of the Mueller report. The world’s greatest deliberate body—in which Republicans represent 41.5 million fewer voters than the Democrats—declined to call witnesses in not one but two impeachment trials; strong-armed three justices onto the Supreme Court; and has blocked a bipartisan investigation into the first insurrection and non-peaceful transfer of power in American history.

Despite zero evidence of voter fraud on behalf of the Biden campaign—none!—the Big Lie to the contrary has led to the purging of Republican leadership and become the rallying cry for Republican candidates for public office.

The takeaway from the Trump era is that a decentralized news media and the death of rational public debate have ushered in a fact-free era in which assertions equal evidence. 

In a 2018 essay ”The Constitution of Knowledge,” Jonathan Rauch describes the information ecosystem in democracies that winnows out nonsense. “We let alt-truth talk but we don’t let it write textbooks, receive tenure, bypass peer review…or dominate the front pages.”

That is changing.

In recent months nearly two dozen GOP-led states have introduced legislation restricting teaching about race. West Virginia and Tennessee have threatened to withhold funding from state agencies or schools that violate restrictions on racial discussions.

The favorite targets of these attempts at state-level censorship have been the 1619 Project, whose creator Nikole Hannah-Jones was awarded the 2020 Pulitzer Prize for Commentary, and a catch-all body of academic theories that has been lumped together as so-called critical race theory.

Rep. Glenn Grothman (R-Wis.), who introduced the latest legislation in Wisconsin, said that critical race theory “teaches our children hate” as though teaching about hate were equivalent to teaching hate.

If one were to superimpose maps of these censorship states with states won by Donald Trump and states where voting restrictions based on the Big Lie have been passed (add in states where vaccine hostility is most resolute) the partisan nature of the campaign is obvious.

“The clear goal of these efforts,” according to a recent statement released by PEN America (whose signatories included the American Historical Association, the American Association of University Professors, the American Federation of Teachers and the Association of American Colleges and Universities), “is to suppress teaching and learning about the role of racism in the history of the United States.”

Period.

This is a propaganda offensive which, in conjunction with voter suppression and the filibuster, is supposed to assure a future for a Republican Party which has lost the popular vote in seven of the eight most recent presidential elections. Bombastic oratory is a fixture of political rhetoric but forcing it into the classroom is a mainstay of authoritarian and totalitarian governments everywhere.

In his grotesque Mount Rushmore speech on July 4th of last year, Donald Trump, typically blamed the attempt to indoctrinate American children on the left.

It would be a mistake, however, to regard this hostility to academic integrity as merely another front in the ongoing war between Democrats and Republicans. Ignorance concerning American history, particularly as it concerns Black America, cuts across party and and racial lines.

Why should untutored Americans—White or Black— be expected to know more about Reconstruction than they would about, say,  the Renaissance or particle physics?

Personal experiences about race in America are valuable but do not automatically bestow upon the subject a valid historical perspective.

Juneteenth could have been—could still be—the opening salvo in a scholarly war on bad history.  One can imagine a process driven not by opportunistic politicians of both parties but by scholars, perhaps under the combined auspices of the National Museum of African American History and the American Academy of Political and Social Sciences.

Imagine an annual series of federally-funded teach-ins and lectures; the publication of teaching guides and curricula; the funding of scholarships and teaching fellowships. 

Excellent local models for such an approach already exist. Just this week Rhode Island governor Dan McKee signed into law legislation requiring public K-12 schools to include instruction in African-American history. 

The curriculum was developed in conjunction with the Rhode Island Black Heritage Society, Rhode Island College and the Rhode Island Historical Society and includes an “African heritage road trip and a website where students can access hundreds of historical documents and photographs.”

A Juneteenth Commission could provide the intellectual basis for a rational national discussion on commemorative public spaces, reparations and a whole host of related issues. 

Juneteenth as presently constituted is an unfortunate mistake. We have to do with it as best we can. It is not, however, condemned to be what Kwanzaa and MLK Day have often been— advertising and merchandising opportunities for fast food restaurants and greeting card companies.

Our children deserve more than than.