Juneteenth to me a white woman 2026

Follow The Drinking Gourd:

All week, maybe all month of June, I have been pondering the immense and horrifying subject of American Slavery. For anyone not familiar with what Junetenth is, let me offer my own small context.

To anyone familiar with Gone With The Wind, the movie or the book, you will remember the cavalier fervor with which the young men of the plantation generation viewed the upcoming Civil War. They were jubilant, enthralled by the adrenalin rush, the fantasy they had of heroic action, sanctioned violence, man versus man competition. They vilified the yankee men as weak and drenched themselves in an intoxicated version of their own manliness, courage, and virility. When thy got thrashed in the bloodbath that followed, those who survived, maimed, traumatized, filled with despair and hatred, slunk off to their devastated homesteads and then fled south and westward, to Texas in particular. They took what resurces they had managed to hide away somewhere, sold out, and established their plantation struture elsewhere.

One of the basic tools of subjugation used against the enslaved African American people was the denial of the opportunity to learn to read and write. It was part and parcel of the entrapment. If they couldn't write, they couldn't forge travel letters to free themselves. They couldn't read maps to learn where they were. One thing that couldn't be taken away, however was the sight of the sky. "Follow the Drinking Gourd" a song, was an instruction to find freedom by finding the big dipper in the sky.

An often overlooked fact of the subjugation of women also involved the denial of the right to learn to read and write, a basic educataion. Girls were confined to learning domestic labors, cooking, sewing, cleaning. And even if a liberal patriarch allowed his daughters literacy through a hired tutor, advanced education was denied women through to the 20th century. The push to marry off women as young as possible is part of the confinement of women's potential to the patriarchal goal of producing male heirs to inherit the patriarchs' accumulated wealth. This system continues blantantly and publicly in places like Taliban controlled Afghanistan and in Saudi Arabia.

My childhood was devoted to reading and writing and to this day, I can't understand why everyone isn't impelled by this thirst to KNOW. To me, in books could be found the answer to almost everything! Why would anyone not take advantage of this FREE treasure! Libraraies! Public Free Education! My life has been devoted to this cause. Aside from continuing my own education into my 60's, I devoted my entire adult life to education which began even began in library service when I graduated from college with a degree in English Literature.

Juneteenth is celebrated because the people enslaved on plantations in Texas by the failed confederates who established farms and ranches there, had no access to information and so they didn't know when the emancipation proclamation was publicized. It took the Federal Troops to go down there and tell the people they were free - Let the People Know - Let the People Go!

That Racist Sexist Patriarcal system of exploitation of the lives and efforts of others for personal enrichment still lives on because it lives on in the bad side of mankind - the souless and greedy side, and it powers the MAGA movement that is destroying the country today.

As a teacher, and educated and literate citizen, and a minority who rose through the efforts and sacrifices of civil rights activists both in Emancipation, Suffrage And Birth Control, I celebrate this holiday and all that it means.

Happy Trails and Happy Juneteenth!

wrightj45@yahoo.com