noted that she was careful to suof members o
Although there are undoubtedly differences between the Virginia Native people of today the the Virginia Native people of the 1600s, this is still good practice for anthropologists and historians -- they still have a better connection to the cultures and traditions, and can help point out glaring inaccuracies. It's a wonder Disney didn't do this with their film.
and when it fails (as it so oftendoe
This is a good point about the fallibility of archives and how once information and memory is lost, there will always be gaps in the historical record that obfuscate the reality of what happened.
essons, and a Disney animfilm
Something I've always found particularly distasteful about this film is that, unlike how she is portrayed in the movie, shoe would have been nine years old during the time that the movie takes place.
People of African descent,and to be honest, of some European descent, celebrating the end of slavery in Texas with dishes learned inslavery and a dish favored by ancient Mesoamerican Indians that connected Texas to its Mexican past
In addition the the other points being made about this being a a beautiful way of weaving together the different strands of both Texas history and the author's own family history, the use of food to demonstrate history and syncretism across time is amazing. It reminds me of the historical work being done by the Southern Foodways Alliance at the University of Mississippi -- they research Southern history through the lens of food and actually produced a short film about Juneteenth in 2019!
which condemned as radical and overreaching the idea that freed Blacksshould have been treated as if the words about “equality” actually meant something
Succinct and biting commentary against one of the worst schools of historic thought.
Many histories have Granger reading the Order from thebalcony of his quarters. Other accounts say that Granger and soldiers went to strategic places throughoutthe city and read the Order.
Fascinating that such a monumental moment in the lives of many people is recorded so poorly -- the fragility and fracturing of memory over time is strange to think about.
a place to understand the historical consciousnessof African Americans and thus performances of memory
The idea that Juneteenth celebrations are "performances of memory" is interesting to me-- it makes me wonder how the performance of memory has changed over time, especially as we get further away from the celebration's inception. How was a 1900 Juneteenth celebration different from a 2023 one? Is one more "authentic" or (to use the author's word) "mature" than another, or do they just reflect the time and place that they happened in?
In2019, for example, Mississippi celebrated on May 8; in Florida, May 22; Alabama and Georgia, May 28;Missouri, August 4; and Kentucky and Tennessee on August 8.
Someone else noted that how long it took people to find out about emancipation seems surprising now, given how readily available information is in the modern day. Seeing it put like this, however, with people in Tennessee learning about something as groundbreaking as their own emancipation four months after people in Mississippi, really drove that sentiment home for me.
Enslaved people interviewed in the Texas Works Progress Administration
While I don't think they're from this project specifically, I've listened to the recordings from the 1930s of oral histories from former enslaved people on the Library of Congress website. Incredibly harrowing stuff, but a valuable resource for historians and really anyone to actually get a sense of what life was like for enslaved people, in their own words.
Juneteenth offered a rare opportunity for public speeches of uplift or protest with littleretribution from the white population.
I'm curious as to why this is - it seems that every other instance of uplift and protest by Black people in the South at this time was met with violence or scorn, so I wonder what characteristics of these celebrations made it so that Juneteenth was able to be a bright spot/moment of reprieve?
In more sophisticated fashion, a computercompany-Apple-has featured King (as well as Einstein and Gandhi) in itsadvertisements, under the banner "Think Different," exploiting King's imageas an innovator without much concern that King's career predated the infor-mation revolution or that he might have been more critical than supportive ofthe corporate giant.
The inclusion of Gandhi and King here seems especially egregious here given Apple's exploitation of labor in the global South.
"tomake sure it's an American holiday, not just an African-American holiday."
Interesting that similar sentiments are not usually expressed about Columbus day or Presidents' day.
Thestate permitted its employees the option of taking off either the day of the fed-eral holiday or one of three Confederate holidays spread throughout the year.
This makes it clear that the opposition to MLK day's designation as a federal holiday, at least in South Carolina, was racially motivated - why else would it stand in opposition to "Confederate holidays"?
In 1979, PresidentJimmy Carter lobbied Congress to pass a King holiday bill, but the legislationmet defeat in the House later that year.
It seems like MLK day was a de facto holiday long before being signed into law by Reagan - what changed between Carter's failed initiative to offcialize MLK day and the successful one in 1983?
and a skepticalPresident Ronald Reagan signed it into law on November 3, 1983.
I found the fact that Reagan, however reluctantly, was the one to sign MLK day into law particularly surprising, given what I know about him and the climate of reactionary conservatism he presided over.