A Juneteenth celebration in Austin, Texas, in 1900. On June 19, 1865, nearly two hundred thousand enslaved people were emancipated in the state.
Photograph by Grace Murray Stephenson / Austin History Center
"...the separation of families has deep roots in the American past. It was not at all uncommon for children to be sold separately from their parents on the auction block. In fact, the sale of children was such a common feature of slavery that Daina Ramey Berry, a professor of history at the University of Texas, was able to construct a database of their pricing and sales history for her book 'The Price for Their Pound of Flesh....'”
By the time word of freedom had drifted west to Texas, it was old news elsewhere. On June 19, 1865, the nearly two hundred thousand men, women, and children enslaved in Texas learned of their emancipation, two and a half years after Lincoln had issued the proclamation terminating slavery in states rebelling against the union. The institution of slavery was essentially an open-air prison, and proved remarkably successful, at least in this instance, at the kind of information control that exploitation relies on. Juneteenth, the annual celebration marking the day that this postponed freedom arrived in Texas, occupies a strange niche in American culture, isolated as a black tradition, as if the
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