LOS ANGELES — Contrary to the parades and concerts, the reality of the Juneteenth national holiday in 2024 is that the Civil War is not over.
The 47 million African-Americans in the United States must follow the example of the 4 million who took the greatest leap in human history in 1865 and emerge victorious over racism.
As I speak this weekend at the A.C. Bilbrew Black Resource Center in Los Angeles and at Berkeley Juneteenth, I am filled with the spirit of Dr. Carlton B. Goodlett, one of the unsung heroes of Pan Africanism; Wesley Johnson, who used Juneteenth for creating a migration from segregation; and Mary Helen Rogers, who followed in Johnson’s footsteps to create the longest continuous Juneteenth observance, now 75 years old.
Just as we have to properly define Juneteenth, we have to properly define our place in history. As I note in my podcast The Promised Land, we are on the verge of reaching the goal that ten generations of Africans have battled for.
But first we have to learn how successful we’ve already been.
I told the packed audience at San Rafael Public Library that Juneteenth represents the greatest victory in human history. Every major religion rests on the legend of a people who are saved from purgatory by divine intervention. The evidence of these events is ephemeral.
However, Juneteenth is the evidence of this miracle. What happened?
On June 19, 1865, fourteen regiments of U.S. Troops of African Descent formally occupied Texas, the last Confederate state to surrender. The mythology misses the entire point of the milestone. Galveston, Texas, was the first Confederate capital to fall in October 1862 because the first goal of the Union was to prevent an alliance between French forces in Mexico and the Confederate States of America.
The capture of New Orleans, and Vicksburg completed the occupation of the Mississippi River basin, which essentially prevented the main objective of the Confederacy, creating a direct market for slavery-produced cotton to Europe.
Nineteen regiments of freedmen formed the Corps d’Afrique immediately after the issuance of the Emancipation Proclamation, which granted the wish of abolitionists for Africans to be soldiers in the fight against the Confederacy.
Five of those regiments were stationed at the mouth of the Rio Grande in 1863 to prevent that alliance. However, the transfer of Gens. U.S. Grant and William T. Sherman to Virginia and Tennessee allowed Confederates to recapture Galveston in a sneak attack on Jan. 1, 1863, the effective date of the Emancipation Proclamation because they feared mass escapes from the largest concentration of enslaved.
The unsuccessful Red River campaign led by Gen. Nathaniel Banks in 1864 meant Confederates were able to control the interior of Texas while the Union defeated the other rebel armies.
On April 3, the 29th Connecticut Volunteers, part of the all-black 25th Corps, entered Petersburg, the beginning of the end for the Army of Northern Virginia. By April 8, they entered Richmond, the Confederate capital, along with the 31st U.S. Colored Infantry. They continued to pursue Gen. Robert E. Lee and 5,000 U.S. Troops of African Descent occupied the railroad line at Appomattox Court House, causing his surrender.
Our history is fundamentally flawed because the honor has not been accorded to the Black soldiers who defeated their slave masters, but to the losing traitorous general who never occupied any new territory and gave up after the death of one million fellow Americans.
The cancellation of the treason trials against Jefferson Davis and Lee in Richmond provided the opportunity to completely misconstrue the history.
Juneteenth is the evidence of the significance of the U.S. Troops of African Descent, because Gen. U.S. Grant sent the entire 25th Corps to Texas in May 1865 to complete the occupation of Texas, whose Confederate commanders had gone to Mexico City after Lee’s surrender to seek an alliance with the Frence.
It meant that these nine regiments were seen as the most elite forces in the Union Army and gave them the honor of ending the war in glory.
Instead, they have been completely ignored on their day of honor.
As a result, there has been an open question about the conclusions of the Civil War. The remaining 2.5 million African-Americans in slavery both in the Confederate states and some Union states became free on Dec. 18, 1865 when Secretary of State William Seward issued the proclamation on the ratification of the 13th Amendment.
The amendment was approved by the U.S. Senate in May 1864, but took until Jan. 31, 1865 to reach two-thirds of the House. Twenty states would ratify it in the month of February, which took the wind out of the sails of the Confederacy.
U.S. Troops of African Descent would occupy Wilmington, Charleston and Mobile in the succeeding months leaving Texas as the last prize.
Had the amendment not been passed, the end of the war would have meant the return of slavery, an intolerable result for two million Americans who fought for the Union and one million African-Americans who left for Union lines after the Emancipation Proclamation.
On Jan. 6, 2021, something that never happened during the Civil War occurred — Confederate flags occupying the U.S. Capitol. This is because the glory and honor did not go to the soldiers who preserved the nation.
So we have to complete their mission: enforcing the 13th, 14th and 15th Amendment from greedy monopolists who see humans as commodities to be exploited. Now the medium is artificial intelligence instead of chains, but the result is the same.
The Black people of Texas were not ignorant. In 1866, they voted in a ratio of 90 percent for a new Texas constitution where they were the majority of the voters. That was the objective of the Juneteenth observance, voter mobilization.
In 2024, we don’t have to take up arms like the U.S. Troops of African Descent. Now, proudly, their successors lead the Department of Defense in the top civilian and uniformed roles. But we do have to vote in massive numbers to protect the 14th Amendment, which banned those who participated in an insurrection from an office of public trust.
A renegade Supreme Court violated the Constitution and is angling to undermine the three amendments which are the covenant between African-Americans and their fellow Americans.
The proper celebration of Juneteenth is in November.