‘Juneteenth’ is not a ‘slur’

In one of last week’s opinion pieces, you write: “Juneteenth was ‘June Nineteenth’ when Union Soldiers emancipated slaves in Texas. The slaves slurred their words and June 19 became ‘Juneteenth’!”

Your statement that the slaves slurred their speech is racist and offensive, because it plays upon the old stereotype that African-Americans just shuffle along slowly without picking up their feet and are even too lazy to open their mouths all the way, so that their words come out all slurred and garbled.

Please note: Then as now, African-Americans did and do not slur their words—or at least not any more frequently than any of the rest of us do.

“Juneteenth” is not a ‘slur’; it is a *contraction* of “June Nineteenth,” in the same way that “Wednesday” is a contraction of “Wedenes Day.” Not all contractions use apostrophes. So, June + Nineteenth = Junenineteenth > June’teenth > Juneteenth. Likewise, Wedenes Day > Wed’nes Day > Wed’nesday > Wednesday; ‘Weden’ being the principal deity of the old Anglo-Saxon pre-Christian religion. (He was the English equivalent to the Norse god ‘Odin’ and the German god ‘Wotan’.)

Your history is also slightly misstated. The Union Army did not emancipate the slaves in Texas. President Lincoln did that by a late 1862 executive order that took effect on 1 January 1863. But he only abolished slavery in the states that had seceded from the Union. Slavery remained legal in Delaware, Maryland, West Virginia, Kentucky, and Missouri because those states had remained loyal to the union. The Emancipation Proclamation also did not apply to the parts of southeast Virginia, west Tennessee, and southern Louisiana that were occupied by Union troops at the time the Proclamation was made.

Communication being what it was during the Civil War, word of the Emancipation Proclamation did not reach Texas until May 1865, and it took a while for the word to spread. Union Army forces arrived in Galveston, Texas on 18 June 1865. On 19 June, General Granger announced that slavery had been abolished in the Southern states two and a half years earlier; and that he and his men had arrived in Galveston to enforce the Proclamation.

The Civil War ended three days later on 22 June 1865. Slavery was finally abolished throughout the United States (except as punishment for a crime) on 6 December 1865, when ratification of the Thirteenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution was complete.

Juneteenth is a half-day state holiday in Texas, and a ceremonial state holiday in all other states except Arizona, Hawai`i, Montana, New Hampshire, North Dakota, South Dakota, and Utah. A ceremonial holiday is a holiday like Mother’s Day or Harvey Milk Day – it’s noted as a holiday on the state’s official calendar, but government offices remain open (except for holidays like Mother’s Day and Father’s Day, which always fall on Sunday when the offices are closed anyway).

Mícheál McLoughlin
San Francisco