Why Black Folks Who Did Not Know Juneteenth Was A Thing Until Biden Said So …Need Their Black Card Revoked

Today is Juneteenth. It was celebrated for years by Black Southerners as the day we truly tasted freedom. Yeah, Abraham Lincoln said “four score and seven years ago” in Gettysburg, but the real ones know that Black folks were not free until Major General Gordon Granger ordered that all the slaves in Texas were to be set free.

White folks found out about Juneteenth after George Floyd, and that’s understandable. They aren’t invited to many cookouts. But Black folks who didn’t know about the holiday…what’s up with that?

 There is no excuse for Black folks to not have known and celebrated this day before President Joe Biden made it a national holiday. Have a seat. Let me be professorial and tell you why.

Juneteenth finds its origins in Texas, but Black folks from that state are not the only ones who celebrated it. Many Black people in other Southern states took up commemorating the day as early as 1909.

Then the Great Migration happened from roughly from 1910 to 1970. During that time, more than 6 million Black folks from the South moved North with the hope that would find less racism and more job opportunities in the Northeast, Midwest and Western parts of the United States. (Warmth of Other Suns is the definitive book that tells this story.)

These Black people may have left the South, but they did not leave their heritage. They brought their culture and traditions with them when they left, so it stands to reason that Black folks from as far West as Compton and as far East as New York City should at least have a working knowledge of what this holiday represents.

Throw into the mix that we are now connected to the entire world via the internet. There is NO reason for a Black person to not have heard of Juneteenth before 2021. (Especially when you take into consideration that Barbra-Rose Collins, a Democrat from Michigan, was the first to introduce legislation asking for it to be recognized by the U.S. federally)

Look, no shade to the Black folks who did not know Juneteenth was a thing before a geriatric white man told you it was. We forgive you. We also suspect that you put sugar in your grits.