{"id":48244,"date":"2022-06-19T12:28:50","date_gmt":"2022-06-19T19:28:50","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/?p=48244"},"modified":"2022-06-19T12:28:50","modified_gmt":"2022-06-19T19:28:50","slug":"everyday-erinyes-323","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/2022\/06\/19\/everyday-erinyes-323\/","title":{"rendered":"Everyday Erinyes #323"},"content":{"rendered":"

Experts in autocracies have pointed out that it is, unfortunately, easy to slip into normalizing the tyrant, hence it is important to hang on to outrage. These incidents which seem to call for the efforts of the Greek Furies (Erinyes) to come and deal with them will, I hope, help with that. As a reminder, though no one really knows how many there were supposed to be, the three names we have are Alecto<\/strong><\/span>, Megaera<\/span><\/strong>, and Tisiphone<\/span><\/strong>. These roughly translate as “unceasing,” “grudging,” and “vengeful destruction.”<\/p>\n

This is not the first time I (or TC) have written about Juneteenth, but I don’t like to let it slip away. Confederates of the 1860’s (and earlier and later) could certainly give today’s Republicans a run for their money on delusion and denial – and mean spirited arrogance. “Well, just don’t tell them they’re free, and they’ll have to stay enslaved.”\u00a0 I apologize if that prompted a Barf Bag – especially when there are so many delicacies to celebrate with.<\/a>
\n==============================================================<\/p>\n

Juneteenth celebrates just one of the United States\u2019 20 emancipation days \u2013 and the history of how emancipated people were kept unfree needs to be remembered,\u00a0too<\/h1>\n
Emancipation Day celebration, June 19, 1900, held in \u2018East Woods\u2019 on East 24th St. in Austin, Texas.
\nAustin History Center<\/a><\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Kris Manjapra<\/a>, Tufts University<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n

The actual day was June 19, 1865<\/a>, and it was the Black dockworkers in Galveston, Texas, who first heard the word that freedom for the enslaved had come. There were speeches, sermons and shared meals, mostly held at Black churches, the safest places to have such celebrations.<\/p>\n

The perils of unjust laws and racist social customs were still great in Texas for the 250,000 enslaved Black people there, but the celebrations known as Juneteenth<\/a> were said to have gone on for seven straight days.<\/p>\n

The spontaneous jubilation was partly over Gen. Gordon Granger\u2019s General Order No. 3<\/a>. It read in part<\/a>, \u201cThe people of Texas are informed that, in accordance with a proclamation from the Executive of the United States, all slaves are free.\u201d<\/p>\n

But the emancipation that took place in Texas that day in 1865 was just the latest in a series of emancipations that had been unfolding since the 1770s, most notably the Emancipation Proclamation<\/a> signed by President Abraham Lincoln<\/a> two years earlier on Jan. 1, 1863.<\/p>\n

As I explore in my book<\/a> \u201cBlack Ghost of Empire,\u201d between the 1780s and 1930s, during the era of liberal empire and the rise of modern humanitarianism, over 80 emancipations from slavery occurred, from Pennsylvania in 1780<\/a> to Sierra Leone in 1936<\/a>.<\/p>\n

There were, in fact, 20 separate emancipations<\/a> in the
\nUnited States alone, from 1780 to 1865, across the U.S. North and South.<\/p>\n

In my view as a scholar of race and colonialism<\/a>, Emancipation Days \u2013 Juneteenth in Texas \u2013 are not what many people think, because emancipation did not do what most of us think it did.<\/p>\n

As historians have long documented<\/a>, emancipations did not remove all the shackles that prevented Black people from obtaining full citizenship rights. Nor did emancipations prevent states from enacting their own laws that prohibited Black people from voting or living in white neighborhoods.<\/p>\n

In fact, based on my research<\/a>, emancipations were actually designed to force Blacks and the federal government to pay reparations to slave owners \u2013 not to the enslaved \u2013 thus ensuring white people maintained advantages in accruing and passing down wealth across generations.<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Reparations to slave owners<\/h2>\n

The emancipations shared three common features that, when added together, merely freed the enslaved in one sense, but reenslaved them in another sense.<\/p>\n

The first, arguably the most important, was the ideology of gradualism<\/a>, which said that atrocities against Black people would be ended slowly, over a long and open-ended period.<\/p>\n

The second feature was state legislators who held fast to the racist principle that emancipated people were units of slave owner property \u2013 not captives who had been subjected to crimes against humanity.<\/p>\n

The third was the insistence that Black people had to take on various forms of debt<\/a> in order to exit slavery. This included economic debt, exacted by the ongoing forced and underpaid work that freed people had to pay to slave owners.<\/p>\n

In essence, freed people had to pay for their freedom, while enslavers had to be paid to allow them to be free.<\/p>\n

Emancipation myths and realities<\/h2>\n

On March 1, 1780, for instance, Pennsylvania\u2019s state Legislature set a global precedent for how emancipations would pay reparations to slave owners and buttress the system of white property rule.<\/p>\n

The Pennsylvania Act for the Gradual Abolition of Slavery<\/a> stipulated \u201cthat all persons, as well negroes, and mulattos, as others, who shall be born within this State, from and after the Passing of this Act, shall not be deemed and considered as Servants for Life or Slaves.\u201d<\/p>\n

At the same time, the legislation prescribed \u201cthat every negroe and mulatto child born within this State\u201d could be held in servitude \u201cunto the age of twenty eight Years\u201d and \u201cliable to like correction and punishment\u201d as enslaved people.<\/p>\n

After that first Emancipation Day in Pennsylvania<\/a>, enslaved people still remained in bondage for the rest of their lives, unless voluntarily freed by slave owners.<\/p>\n

Only the newborn children of enslaved women were nominally free after Emancipation Day. Even then, these children were forced to serve as bonded laborers from childhood until their 28th birthday.<\/p>\n

All future emancipations shared the Pennsylvania DNA.<\/p>\n

Emancipation Day came to Connecticut<\/a> and Rhode Island<\/a> on March 1, 1784. On July 4, 1799, it dawned in New York<\/a>, and on July 4, 1804, in New Jersey<\/a>. After 1838, West Indian people in the United States began commemorating the British Empire\u2019s Emancipation Day<\/a> of Aug. 1.<\/p>\n

The District of Columbia\u2019s day<\/a> came on April 16, 1862.<\/p>\n

\"Seven
President Abraham Lincoln signs the Emancipation Proclamation.<\/span>
\nGetty Images<\/a><\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Eight months later, on Jan. 1, 1863, President Lincoln signed the Emancipation Proclamation<\/a> that freed the enslaved only in Confederate states \u2013 not in the states loyal to the Union, such as New Jersey, Maryland, Delaware, Kentucky and Missouri.<\/p>\n

Emancipation Day dawned in Maryland<\/a> on Nov. 1, 1864. In the following year, emancipation was granted on April 3 in Virginia<\/a>, on May 8 in Mississippi<\/a>, on May 20 in Florida<\/a>, on May 29 in Georgia<\/a>, on June 19 in Texas<\/a> and on Aug. 8 in Tennessee<\/a> and Kentucky<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Slavery by another name<\/h2>\n

After the Civil War, the three Reconstruction Amendments<\/a> to the U.S. Constitution each contained loopholes that aided the ongoing oppression of Black communities.<\/p>\n

The Thirteenth Amendment of 1865<\/a> allowed for the enslavement of incarcerated people through convict leasing<\/a>.<\/p>\n

The Fourteenth Amendment of 1868<\/a> permitted incarcerated people to be denied the right to vote.<\/p>\n

And the Fifteenth Amendment of 1870<\/a> failed to explicitly ban forms of voter suppression<\/a> that targeted Black voters and would intensify during the coming Jim Crow era.<\/p>\n

In fact, Granger\u2019s Order No. 3<\/a>, on June 19, 1865, spelled it out.<\/p>\n

Freeing the slaves, the order read, \u201cinvolves an absolute equality of personal rights and rights of property, between former masters and slaves, and the connection heretofore existing between them, become that between employer and hired labor.\u201d<\/p>\n

Yet, the order further states: \u201cThe freed are advised to remain at their present homes, and work for wages. They are informed that they will not be allowed to collect at military posts; and that they will not be supported in idleness either there or elsewhere.\u201d<\/p>\n

The meaning of Juneteenth<\/h2>\n

Since the moment emancipation celebrations started on March 1, 1780, all the way up to June 19, 1865, Black crowds gathered to seek redress for slavery.<\/p>\n

\"with
A Black woman raises her fist in the air during a Juneteenth reenactment celebration in Galveston, Texas, on June 19, 2021.<\/span>
\nMark Felix \/AFP\/Getty Images<\/a><\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

On that first Juneteenth in Texas, and increasingly so during the ones that followed, free people celebrated their resilience amid the failure of emancipation to bring full freedom.<\/p>\n

They stood for the end of debt bondage, racial policing and discriminatory laws that unjustly harmed Black communities. They elevated their collective imagination from out of the spiritual sinkhole of white property rule.<\/p>\n

Over the decades, the traditions of Juneteenth ripened into larger gatherings in public parks, with barbecue picnics and firecrackers and street parades with brass bands.<\/p>\n

At the end of his 1999 posthumously published novel, \u201cJuneteenth<\/a>,\u201d noted Black author Ralph Ellison<\/a> called for a poignant question to be asked on Emancipation Day: \u201cHow the hell do we get love into politics or compassion into history?\u201d<\/p>\n

The question calls for a pause as much today as ever before.\"The<\/p>\n

Kris Manjapra<\/a>, Professor of History, Tufts University<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n

This article is republished from The Conversation<\/a> under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article<\/a>.<\/p>\n

==============================================================
\nAlecto<\/strong><\/span>, Megaera<\/span><\/strong>, and Tisiphone<\/span><\/strong>, I know you’re busy, but if you can manage, you might just want to track down some of those slaveowners in the underworld and give them a piece of all our minds. Not that they probably haven’t heard it – but those are mighty thick heads to try to get it through to.<\/p>\n

The Furies and I will be back.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Experts in autocracies have pointed out that it is, unfortunately, easy to slip into normalizing the tyrant, hence it is important to hang on to outrage. These incidents which seem to call for the efforts of the Greek Furies (Erinyes) to come and deal with them will, I hope, help with that. As a reminder, […]<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":8,"featured_media":46415,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[145,5],"tags":[3729,3866,3725,3748],"class_list":["post-48244","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-holiday","category-politics","tag-furies","tag-history","tag-holiday","tag-racism","category-145-id","category-5-id","post-seq-1","post-parity-odd","meta-position-corners","fix"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/48244","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/8"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=48244"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/48244\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/46415"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=48244"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=48244"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=48244"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}