On Juneteenth

“The matter was settled when Texans successfully rebelled against Mexico and set up the Republic of Texas in 1836. With this move, the right to enslave was secured, and White settlers poured into the new republic.”

This quote refers to the dispute between Anglo-American settlers and the Mexican government regarding the matter of slavery in the region. The disagreement led to the Texas Revolution. This quote demonstrates slavery was central to the development of the region, which is significant to the analysis in the book because of the way dominant historical narratives have glossed over slavery’s centrality to Texas.

“United States Major General Gordon Granger, two years after Abraham Lincoln had issued the Emancipation Proclamation, and two and a half months after Lincoln was assassinated, brought the news on June 19, 1865, that the joint effort had not succeeded.”

This quote refers to Granger’s issuance of General Order No. 3 announcing the end of legalized slavery in Texas. He issued the Order in Galveston, Texas, and since that day Juneteenth has been a holiday among Black Texans.

“The choice for slavery was deliberate, and that reality is hard to square with a desire to present a pristine and heroic origin story about the settlement of Texas. There is no way to do this without suggesting that the lives of African Americans, and their descendants, in Texas, did not, and do not, matter.”

Here, Gordon-Reed points out the contingent nature of history, which is an enduring theme throughout her analysis. The reality and experiences of Black people in the region clashes with white Anglo-Americans’ need for historical narratives that absolve them of their responsibility for past atrocities and their legacies today. Despite this complication, the perspectives and experiences of people of color are essential to the reconstruction of history because they provide a more complex and realistic understanding of the past and the ways that it continues to inform the present.

“All the major currents of American history flow through Texas.” 

This quote points to the reason Texas is a fitting point of analysis for Gordon-Reed’s historical study. Texas brings together all the characteristics of the US that have contributed to its complex history, including an international border, disputes between European and Indigenous peoples, disputes among Europeans, a revolution and establishment of an independent nation, as well as legalized slavery and Jim Crow. There is much to be gleaned about US history generally from the study of Texas history specifically.

“For many years, Blacks like the ones in Conroe and Livingston—all over the country, really—have had their stories written out of history. The tyranny of ideas about “the archive” or what constitutes the official record, all too often, has buried their knowledge and rendered it suspect. This is so despite the fact that it is well known that such people were operating under an oppression that deliberately prevented them from creating parts of the archive or making official records.”

Here, Gordon-Reed acknowledges the omission of Black people’s experiences and perspectives from history has been deliberate. Furthermore, when their stories come to light, they are viewed as merely anecdotal or altogether suspicious while white people’s perspectives and experiences are regarded as objective and representative for all people. Thus, Gordon-Reed’s analysis in the various chapters involves questioning the creation of historical narratives and what purposes they serve as well as examining what the inclusion of Black people’s perspectives and experiences add to the understanding of Texas and US history.

“Becoming educated was an act of resistance. The classroom was a site of resistance. Along with ministers, many of whom also saw racial uplift as part of their task, schoolteachers were among the most respected members of the Black community.”

Gordon-Reed explains the importance of and special regard for Black teachers in the Black community. Although school integration has been regarded as objectively good in the nation’s history, Gordon-Reed points out that one of its implications was the loss of this significance of Black teachers since so many of them were placed in administrative roles rather than teaching roles during integration, and the disruption of bonds forged between Black students and Black teachers, who belonged to the same community and related to each other in a way that was not possible during and after integration when white teachers dominated the classroom.

“Not to place conquering in a good light, but seeing Africans in America who were out of the strict confines of the plantation—and seeing them presented as something other than the metaphorical creation of English people—would have pushed back against the narrative of inherent limitation. Africans were all over the world, doing different things, having all kinds of experiences. Blackness does not equal inherent incapacity and natural limitation.”

Here, Gordon-Reed acknowledges the history of Africans in North America is not limited to plantation slavery or control by white Anglo-Americans as dominant Anglo-American historical narratives have presented. The notion that all people of African descent in North America have been subject to plantation slavery is a part of an attempt to push the idea of Black people’s inherent incapacity, and therefore, inferiority that would justify their enslavement. Thus, learning about people of African descent who may have had a different experience of North America than people who were enslaved on plantations wrests Black experience from monolithic notions of Blackness that were constructed to serve white people.

“Thinking of these interactions as part of a global system makes even more clear that the origin story of Africans in North America is much richer and much more complicated than the story of twenty Africans arriving in Jamestown in 1619. The story, with all its aspects and components, had even earlier origins in the region that would become Texas.”

This quote refers to the field of Atlantic History that began to gain prominence in the 1980s. Using the entire Atlantic as a framework challenges nationalistic interpretations of history and instead looks toward interactions among Africans, Europeans, and the Indigenous as a part of a global system. Thus, Texas becomes an important site for analyzing this global interaction because Africans arrived in the region prior to the 1619 arrival at Jamestown.

“Frankly, that the people who were doing the forcing were also the people who had held Black people in slavery deepened my sympathy, seeing in my mind that there should have been an affinity between Blacks and Indigenous people in those times.”

Here, Gordon-Reed addresses the assumption that a “natural” affinity should have existed between Black and Indigenous people since they shared a common oppressor in white Anglo-American settler colonialists. However, she goes on to point out that this assumption is faulty because it requires imposing the racial thinking of her time on to the past as well as interpreting historical events based on how things turned out. She suggests that such assumptions and biases should be kept in mind when interpreting historical narrative.

“After this consolidation, having been victims themselves, they participated in what was a newly expanded trade in Indian slaves.”

This quote is significant because it debunks the myth of “natural” racial affinity and alliance. Indigenous tribes were not bound by racial solidarity, and therefore disputes among neighboring tribes were a source of Indigenous slaves for the English, as kidnapping and selling other tribes’ members into slavery was a common war tactic. Furthermore, this quote suggests the experience of settler colonialism did not necessarily make different tribes sympathetic toward one another in the early days, again debunking the myth that some “natural” racial solidarity existed among Indigenous Americans.

“In the twenty-first century, the US has come to a point of reckoning about its past, including the story of the dispossession of Native peoples, who are still very much present. At the same time where appropriate, Native people are now being asked to come to grips with their relationship to African Americans, the descendants of people whom they enslaved, and with whom, in some cases, they share a bloodline.”

Here, Gordon-Reed notes the development of what is now the United States is inextricable from the violence of settler colonialism and stealing of Indigenous American land. In the present, partly because Indigenous Americans are still present and not simply a part of the past as dominant historical narratives have suggested, the US has to come to terms with the reality of this violence and dispossession, including its present-day impact. This quote also points to the reality that there was no “natural” alliance between Indigenous Americans and Black people despite sharing a common enemy, so Indigenous people must also face the reality they participated in the institution of slavery while they were being victimized by settler colonialism.

“What has it meant (what does it mean) for Blacks to claim Americanness while substantial numbers of their fellow Americans reject the idea that Blacks can be true Americans? And that they have used their greater numbers to make that rejection the basis of law and social policy?”

Gordon-Reed poses these questions to prompt thinking about the double consciousness of Black Americans as a result of “Black” and “American” being constructed in opposition to each other, and more specifically that “American” has been constructed to be synonymous with “white.” She also extends these questions to think about what it means to be a Black Texan, because similarly “Texan” has also been constructed as synonymous with “white.”

“Slavery was to be a permanent state for Blacks. This actually interfered with the right to dispose of property as the owner saw fit. Enslavers could not free the people they enslaved without permission.”

Here, Gordon-Reed discusses the stipulations of the Texas Republic’s Constitution regarding Black people. Black people were only allowed to exist in the new Republic as enslaved people. This points to the intentions of those credited with founding Texas to make Texas a white republic, and this sense of a white republic was predicated upon the presence of Black enslaved people whom the white citizens could control.

“The story about Houston sending West to Santa Anna plays on a stereotype about African American women. That West would accept the assignment, and carry it out, suggests her natural licentiousness.”

This quote points to Gordon-Reed’s chief concern with historical narrative. That is, the need to question who and what purpose the historical narrative serves, which is also to ask from whose perspective the story is told. Although learning about Emily West does complicate simple narratives that suggest no people of color were present at pivotal times in Texas’s history, Gordon-Reed must also look at the role that West is assigned in this story and how it plays on stereotypes about women of color that have often been used to justify rape and sexual assault by white men.

“The chief difficulty lies in how people of color can be fit into the legends and myths about Texas when the actual historical experiences of Indians, Blacks, and Mexicans wreak havoc with those legends and myths. Whatever we may think about their bravery, valor, and commitment, the stark reality is that the interests of the men most credited with envisioning Texas and bringing it into being were most often antithetical to the people of color who occupied the same space and time with them.”

Gordon-Reed acknowledges the perspectives of people of color complicate the dominant legends and myths by presenting alternative experiences. This also means acknowledging the human fallibility and choices of those whom dominant myths and legends serve, i.e., debunking the myths that these men were pristine and heroic as white people in the present would like to believe.

“Fortunately, merely being in the presence of my grandmother and her sister so often allowed me to learn the broad contours of their lives growing up on a cotton farm with their parents.”

This quote is significant because it demonstrates the alternative perspectives and experiences to be gleaned in community versus in the classroom where historical narratives are sanitized and told from a singular perspective. Although her grandmother and great-aunt’s stories may not be a part of the “official record,” they enrich Gordon-Reed’s understanding of Texas history and what it means to be a Texan.

“Granger’s job was to get to the state, geographically the largest in the Union, impose some degree of order, and announce that all enslaved people were free. He, along with his staff, took up residence in a villa in Galveston.”

This quote discusses General Gordon Granger’s role in Texas following the end of the American Civil War. He came to Galveston, Texas and issued General Order No. 3, which is why Black Texans were the first to celebrate Juneteenth. Gordon-Reed explains in Chapter 6 why Galveston is significant to her personally, as her great-grandfather traveled there seasonally to work on the wharves, and why it is significant generally that it was the place General Order No. 3 was issued. It is the largest city in Texas, and it was a port city, meaning that information spread rapidly.

“Language about equality echoes the words of the American Declaration of Independence, ‘all men are created equal.’ People have long quibbled about what those words meant to Jefferson personally, as if that actually matters to whether the words are true or not. It does not. But Confederates had explicitly rejected the concept of equality announced in the Declaration, as the vice president of the Confederacy, Alexander Stephens, made clear in March 1861 in his infamous ‘Cornerstone Speech.””

Here, Gordon-Reed explains that General Order No. 3 was so shocking to and ill-received by white Texans because it explicitly stated that Black people were equal to their white counterparts. Like other Confederate States, Texas had rejected this idea of equality and was solidly grounded in the assumption of inequality as the language of both Texas’s Constitution and the “Cornerstone Speech” indicate. Thus, the issuance of General Order No. 3 was sufficiently upsetting to white Texans to prompt a violent response to the fundamental altering of reality.

“The fear of the Black imagination was strong throughout slavery. That was one of the reasons free African Americans posed such a problem and was one of the reasons the Texas Constitution prevented the immigration of free Black people into the republic. Seeing that Black people could exist outside of legal slavery put the lie to the idea that Blacks were born to be slaves.”

Again, what Gordon-Reed emphasizes here is that those credited with founding Texas did so with the intention of keeping Black people subjugated. That is, they founded the republic, and the state thereafter, on a basis of inequality. Thus, General Order No. 3, with its language of equality, fundamentally altered Texas’s social order by refuting the idea of an inherent status of slavery for Black people.

“For the most part, however, Gregory and other assistant commissioners, with the discipline of soldiers, tried to uphold that Bureau’s mandate. They did so in the presence of a hostile group of people who had lost a war and were implacably opposed to the transformation of their economic and social lives, which had been built on chattel slavery.”

This quote acknowledges there were efforts toward Black progress during the Reconstruction Era in the form of the Freedmen’s Bureau. At the same time, however, these efforts were met with hostility from white Texans. This suggests, again, that the freedom of formerly enslaved Black people was a fundamental reordering of society, which white Texans were not willing to accept, and in their resistance they would even enact violence on their white counterparts to ensure white domination remained the law of the land.

“Why would White Texans be more obstreperous than other White Southerners? It has been suggested that this was because, unlike other Southern states, Texas had not been defeated militarily. They had won the last battle of the Civil War. That the state had been its own Republic, within the living memory of many Texans, also set them apart from the other Confederates.”

This quote helps explain why the response to General Order No. 3 and Reconstruction was unique in Texas, as Granger, Gregory, and others noted stronger resistance in Texas than anywhere else. Gordon-Reed suggests it is Texas’s final victory in the Civil War as well as their history as an independent nation that contributed to white Texans’ insolence in the face of General Order No. 3 and Reconstruction. This sense of white Texans’ unusual obstinance also calls back to Gordon-Reed’s discussion in Chapter 1 about Texas’s association with extremity.

“Overall, even as Blacks lost power late in the century, having a person like Cuney in place at least provided a visible reminder that people of color could wield power and influence.”

Here, Gordon-Reed acknowledges the power of symbolic representation in government even when substantive needs are not necessarily met. Although Cuney faced some opposition from the Black community because of his failure to adequately support labor unions and strikers, it was still significant to have him in a position of power.

“If the promise of Juneteenth lived anywhere in Texas, it was in Galveston.”

Here, Gordon-Reed points to the significance of Galveston as the Texas city where General Order No. 3 was issued. In later years, after a devastating hurricane brought large numbers of immigrants to rebuild the city, Galveston was viewed as a progressive and cosmopolitan city and Black people there moved about with self-assurance. Thus, the idea of Juneteenth, with its commemoration of emancipation and traditions that bring together the various threads of Texas’s history, was encapsulated by the city of Galveston.