Juneteenth is repeatedly called a celebration of freedom, which is the "longest-running African-American holiday".
Juneteenth is a fake Black National Socialist holiday, no different from the completely made-up racialist holiday of Kwanza. It is not real, and it does not exist. The traditions are not real (because they didn't happen), the celebrations are intentionally designed to subvert the standing holiday that already exists and balkanize black into a Race-Socialist block supported by a completely fictional narrative about the actual holiday in question.
First, what it supposed to mark.
It is supposed to mark the order that Major General Gordon Granger set forward on June 18th 1865. The Civil War was effectively over at this point; and federal armies/militias were mostly marching unimpeded through the former Confederate States of America. The Battle of Appomattox Courthouse took place in April and saw the surrender of Robert E. Lee and the cessation of the Army of Northern Virginia, effectively ending the Eastern front. The capital of the CSA (Richmond, VA) was captured in March already. Jefferson Davis (President of the CSA) was already captured in May. The Confederate government was also dissolved in May, and Lincoln was assassinated in April. Juneteenth takes place almost entirely after the Civil War nearly entirely ends, and the madness of "Reconstruction" slowly begins.
The only thing that hasn't happened is the passage of the 13th Amendment which abolishes slavery. This will be important.
Granger's order is simple. The city of Galveston, Texas had been in a condition of rebellion and insurrection upon his arrival. Hence, in compliance with the Emancipation Proclamation (which took effect on January 1st, 1863) slaves in territories which were in a condition of rebellion or insurrection were now no longer considered the property of their masters.
That's basically it. Most sources that are pretending to be honest will tell you that this didn't fully end slavery (because 13th Amendment hasn't been passed), nor did it end slavery in all of Texas, let alone Maryland (which wasn't officially in rebellion after Lincoln abolished most civil liberties in the state and conducted mass arrests of members of the state legislature.) This is important for later.
While it's entirely reasonable that former slaves in Galveston, TX would have celebrated the abolition of slavery (as they nearly riotously celebrated Lincoln's arrival in Richmond as if he were the 2nd coming of Christ); the question is whether or not this whole "continuously celebrated" concept is true.
We would assume that "Emancipation Day" (rather than Juneteenth), would have at least been celebrated by the residents of Galveston. If it were a normal holiday, we should expect to see many very old traditions that emerge naturally over the past 157 years, as we see with any other holiday. Easter may be about the resurrection of Christ, but the Americans created an "Easter Bunny" icon for the event that naturally emerged. This is because over time, populations will simply invent new traditions as they add to the ones they already engage in. A yearly celebration will change a bit over time with the passing generation; and the population will demark the annual celebration.
Unless, of course, the population didn't mark this yearly passage of time and didn't celebrate it because they didn't even know a holiday existed.
Certainly, we should expect the generation of slaves to celebrate the ending of their slavery; and as they moved away from former plantations (assuming they didn't become share-croppers) that they may return to see family and friends still living in Galveston. But, there would have to be a very strong cultural force to keep the celebrations going every year for the next 157, through multiple generations of non-slaves and immigrants that happened post-slavery. There should be regular and consistent cultural artifacts related to Juneteenth, Emancipation Day, or Jubilee Day through history.
But we don't really see much in the way of evidence of this:
- Here are the mentions of "Emancipation Day", "Jubilee Day", and "Juneteenth" in literature
- Here are the internet searches of "Juneteenth" in Google going back to 2004
"Emancipation Day" and "Jubilee Day" are archaic terms by 2004, so it's not relevant to search for them in internet searches, as Juneteenth is clearly more popular.
What we see from the literature search is that Juneteenth is briefly mentioned from the period of 1866 to 1880. Emancipation Day is a more popular term, most likely because it is a formal term that actually explains what it's referencing, rather than the vernacular Galveston term of "Juneteenth". Jubilee Day gives some very large results, but these are almost entirely from Queen Victoria's Grand Jubilee & Diamond Jubilee in 1887 and 1897. To be clear, these references dwarf mentions of Juneteenth, and these are mentions of a foreign monarch that is outside of the US. Compared to other Holidays, even other artificially constructed ones like Father's Day, Juneteenth is simply barely heard of.
If these celebrations were so continual and important, surely there would be pictures, video, audio, transcripts, or even drawings of Juneteenth celebrations across the US... but of course, there isn't. I see many mentions of the 1866 Juneteenth Galveston celebration having 10,000 people attend; but I can find little actual evidence of the event. For our purposes, as I mentioned before, it is reasonable to assume that slaves celebrated their emancipation as a local holiday. But I see precocious little evidence for other Juneteenth events. I see no photographs of the 1896 Tulsa, Oklahoma Juneteenth celebration. I see no evidence of the of the 1924 Richmond, VA celebration. But perhaps that is the fault of Jim Crow preventing such celebrations. But that doesn't explain the lack of pictures from the 1934 Harlem, NY celebration; the 1958 Chicago, IL celebration; or the 2003 Oakland, CA celebration. Just in the same way you will find zero celebrations of Kwanza in Africa at any time.
This is because: it didn't happen. You are being gaslit.
You don't remember your black friends talking about their annual Juneteenth celebration that they need to schedule PTO for because they didn't, because they don't know what a "Juneteenth" is. Almost nobody did.
Where this changes is when Black Nationalist Socialist Revolutionaries of the 1960's and 1970's begin bringing the holiday out from the past and demanding it be celebrated as an inherent racial holiday, like Kwanza. This includes entire cultural traditions manufactured from whole cloth that don't exist naturally even within black culture. Don't you think you might have heard about Malcolm X's 1958 Juneteenth speech? Don't you think you would have heard about W.E.B. DuBouis's 1924 commemoration? Don't you think you would have enjoyed Muddy Watters' Juneteenth Blues music? Wouldn't Thomas Sowell have mentioned his yearly Juneteenth celebration with his family growing up in the deep south? Don't you think Historically Black Colleges around the US would have regular Juneteenth celebrations if it fucking existed?
As we can see from the Communist fist, and Pan-Africanist flag of the current Galveston celebration: it's clear that the purpose of this holiday is to demark Leftism and re-write history to pretend the Black National Socialists are the vanguard of "Black Culture".
Going back to that whole, 13th Amendment thing. Part of the reason for the 13th Amendment was to end the political controversy that Lincoln had engaged in regarding slavery. The Federal armies had been "freeing" slaves as early as 1861 by simply seizing them as property, by declaring them "contraband"... which was rather illegal. The government can't literally steal "property". Nor can it simply draft slaves into the army as slaves, while claiming to free them, and to not pay them. The Emancipation Proclamation was an attempt to back-rationalize that as a war measure. However, the Emancipation Proclamation still doesn't exactly hold up under federal or constitutional law, which is what you need the 13th amendment for. If slaves don't exist, then you didn't seize property, and the whole thing is moot.
Why would a Race Communist / National Socialist like this idea? Well, this is a military governor occupying a town and abolishing property at the point of a gun without judicial overview. They like it, because they want to replicate that action to everything you own, including your car. They're not good people; do not mistake them as such. These Black National Socialists would have no problem killing slaves, freeing slaves, or taking slaves; as long as they can set an emotional precedent around their fundamental premise that stripping property at the point of a gun is absolutely moral. Claiming to vanguard black culture, is just an aesthetic.
Additionally, this is the Black National Socialists attempt to craft a separate Volkish racial history within the United States that parallels it. As you can see from this 2011 Smithsonian Artilce, Juneteenth is an attempt to replace July 4th as Independence Day. Juneteenth is the affirmative vision of the Black National Socialists imposing a "new" Independence Day that "represents black people"; while there were a plethora of articles condemning Independence Day as inherently racist & white supremacist. In fact, they are normally quite up front about this.
And, I do believe this effort will backfire, and Juneteenth will have to be forgot again because the primary way of commemorating Juneteenth, at this point, is a mass shooting.
It's not that surprising when you consider the vernacular accent of slaves in Texas at the time.
This is an exact transcription from the Library of Congress, from an interview with a slave in 1833 (I picked a random passage):
You can pretty clearly see the effect of no literacy, and only learning English from a rural Ulster-Scott dialect.
"June Nineteenth" would probably have been a bit of a mouthful. Something akin to "Joo ne nen ten nen th". It's a lot easier to say: "Joon TEENF".
Someone who needs to say " T'warn't " is going to contract "June Nineteenth" to "Juneteenth"
Every series of instructions the man ever received were recited at most twice, never written. He better have the steps clear, concise, & in-order or he finna rill-e get 'is bee-hin' whupped.