On Juneteenth, a look back at how America perfected the ‘art of demonizing black men’
Juneteenth on June 19 is the observance of the ending of slavery in the U.S.

Published: June 19, 2020 By Quentin Fottrell

African American men say they are not surprised by the police killing of George Floyd or a white woman in Central Park to calling 911 to falsely claim that a black man, Christian Cooper, was threatening her life. CEPHAS WILLIAM\

‘A child cannot, thank Heaven, know how vast and how merciless is the nature of power, with what unbelievable cruelty people treat each other. He reacts to the fear in his parents’ voices because his parents hold up the world for him and he has no protection without them.’ — James Baldwin, ‘Letter from a Region in My Mind’ (1962)

When Cephas Williams, a London-based artist, visited the House of Lords last year, he went through all the usual security procedures and was asked to take a seat. Williams, a black man, was then approached by a white woman who asked him why he was sitting there. She asked him to move and, believing that he was sitting in a restricted area, he agreed.

“I got up to leave, and she immediately went from 0 to 100,” Williams said. “She said, ‘Why are you raising your voice?’ ” She approached the armed security guards, a white man and a black woman. Williams said he was calm throughout. “I wanted to report what just happened, but they said, ‘There’s no point. She’s one of the most senior people in the House.’ ”

‘Whether it’s your skin color or the place, they reserve the right to police you and police your presence.’— Rich Benjamin, author of ‘Searching for Whitopia: An Improbable Journey to the Heart of White America’

In 2018, Williams created a campaign called 56BlackMen, a series of stark portraits of black men from all walks of life wearing hoodies to show, in his words, “I am Not My Stereotype.” He said it happens on the street, in the school, the workplace, in white-tablecloth restaurants and, yes, even in the venerated House of Lords. “There are people who see the black man as angry or threatening,” he said.

A U.K. Parliament spokesperson told MarketWatch: “We are very sorry to hear of the experiences reported by Cephas Williams. Parliament is working hard to improve its processes for reporting and handling bullying and harassment. We know there is still work to be done, and we would encourage anyone who has experienced bullying or harassment in Parliament to report their experience to our Independent Complaints and Grievance Scheme.”

Given such experiences, Williams was not surprised by recent events in the U.S. The country has been rocked, and also inspired, by protests over the death of George Floyd. Floyd, who was black, died on May 25 after a white Minneapolis policeman kneeled on his neck with the full weight of his body for nearly nine minutes. This week, prosecutors added a second-degree murder charge in addition to the third-degree charge already filed against former officer, Derek Chauvin.

Also see:‘America just really needs to start being honest with itself’: How money and the slave trade shaped policing in the U.S.

Earlier that same day in New York, Amy Cooper, a white woman who was walking her dog without a leash in Central Park, called 911 on a bird watcher, Christian Cooper, who is no relation, after he asked her to put her dog on a leash. “I’m going to tell them there’s an African-American man threatening my life,” she said on a video recording Cooper made on his smartphone. They both left the rambles in the park before the police arrived.

The video may have been unpleasant to watch, but it was not something seen as unfamiliar to many black men. “I was mortified by the Amy Cooper incident, but struck by a bit of recognition when you have a white person who perceives you to have less rights than they, and they to have more rights than you,” said Rich Benjamin, author of “Searching for Whitopia: An Improbable Journey to the Heart of White America.”

“Whether it’s your skin color or the place, they reserve the right to police you and police your presence, and that implies that it’s a white space, and the condition for you being there is their comfort,” he said. “This is prevalent and more common than everyone suspects. It’s not surprising. It’s not new. It’s not rare. The only difference is that this was caught on an iPhone.”

‘A perfected art of demonizing black men’

Terence Fitzgerald, a clinical associate professor of social work at the University of Southern California and author of “Black Males and Racism: Improving the Schooling and Life Chances of African Americans,” said Amy Cooper’s 911 call is a prime example of the kind of leverage that white people can use any time they see fit. “She knew exactly what strings to pluck,” Fitzgerald said.

“It goes beyond just calling her a racist or saying what she did was racist,” he said. “We’re talking about systemic racism, and relying upon a story that has been morphed, honed and perfected throughout time. Politicians have used language with roots in that fear. We are recycling it over and over and over. It’s become a perfected art of demonizing black men.”

‘We’re talking about systemic racism, and relying upon a story that has been morphed, honed and perfected.’— Terence Fitzgerald, author of ‘Black Males and Racism: Improving the Schooling and Life Chances of African Americans’

Fitzgerald said the U.S. media did not put the Central Park video in context. “I watched the reaction of newscasters. It really underestimated the situation. It really didn’t give her the credit or due diligence for what she was doing,” he said. “It’s the tactic that has been used since 1619, the tactic of playing the victim, and knowing that the system would look at her like the innocent one.”

“It goes all the way back to ‘Birth of a Nation’ in 1915, the portrayal of the white woman as the victim,” he said. “She needed a knight to protect her from this dastardly devil, this black man. It was played in the White House for Woodrow Wilson. This false narrative was passed down from generation to generation. The hypersexed black male, known for violence against white women.”

Fitzgerald said the protests over George Floyd’s death and other such incidents, including the one between Amy Cooper and Christian Cooper, represent a moment that Americans should not just walk away from. “That does a disservice to the thousands of black men who have been lynched in the United States,” he said. “This idea of protecting the chastity of white women was the No. 1 reason for lynchings.”


Cephas Williams: ‘I am not my stereotype.’ LIMA CHARLIE

In 2015, the Equal Justice Initiative documented 4,075 racially motivated lynchings of African-Americans in Alabama, Arkansas, Florida, Georgia, Kentucky, Louisiana, Mississippi, North Carolina, South Carolina, Tennessee, Texas and Virginia between 1877 and 1950 — at least 800 more lynchings of black people in these states than had previously been reported.

One such murder: that of Emmett Till, a 14-year-old African-American from Chicago, who was lynched in Mississippi in 1955 after being accused of offending a white woman, Carolyn Bryant, in her parents’ grocery store. The all-white, all-male jury took 67 minutes to acquit the two men accused of the crime. One juror reportedly said, “If we hadn’t stopped to drink pop, it wouldn’t have taken that long.”

Black women and men are significantly more likely than white men and women to be killed by police.

According to a news report at the time, one of the defense lawyers, J. W. Kellum, told the jury that they were “custodians of American civilization,” adding, “I want you to tell me where under God’s shining sun is the land of the free and the home of the brave if you don’t turn these boys loose; your forefathers will absolutely turn over in their graves.”

Last year, police in the U.S. killed 1,099 people, according to Mapping Police Violence, a research and advocacy group. Black people accounted for 24% of those killed, it found, despite being only 13% of the population; they are three times more likely to be killed by police than white people, and 1.3 times more likely to be unarmed than white people.

“Black women and men and American Indian and Alaska Native women and men are significantly more likely than white women and men to be killed by police,” a recent study by researchers from Rutgers University, the University of Michigan, and Washington University in St. Louis found. “Latino men are also more likely to be killed by police than are white men.” They wrote, “Over the life course, about 1 in every 1,000 black men can expect to be killed by police.”

The Pew Research Center, a think tank in Washington, D.C., last year released a survey of more than 6,637 adults in English and Spanish that concluded: “Blacks are considerably more likely than whites, Hispanics or Asians to say that people have acted as if they were suspicious of them; that they have been treated unfairly by an employer; or that they have been unfairly stopped by police.”

George Floyd, meanwhile, is one of 44 people that Minneapolis police rendered unconscious with neck restraints in the last five years, according to an NBC News analysis of police records, and three-fifths of them were black. The Minneapolis police define “neck restraints” as any time an officer uses an arm or a leg to press someone’s neck without directly pressuring the airway.

Related:What the 1921 Tulsa race massacre can teach us about the racial wealth gap in 2020


Rich Benjamin: ‘This is prevalent and more common than everyone suspects. It’s not surprising. It’s not new. It’s not rare.’

The narrative of ‘the other’

It is an age-old narrative, Fitzgerald said. “When someone is considered ‘the other,’ naturally we do not see them as one of us or carrying the same morals and values,” he said. “We see them as less than and below us on this imaginary apex and this hierarchy of supremacy. We treat them worse, and not as someone valuable and not a reflection of ‘me.’ ”

Cases in which fictitious black men were accused of crimes are too numerous to list, but some have caught the mainstream public’s attention more than others. In 1994, Susan Smith, a South Carolina mother of two, told police a black man had driven off with her young children strapped into the back of the car. After her car was found in a lake, she was sentenced to 30 years in prison for the murders of her 3- and 1-year-olds.

Other fictitious allegations caught on like wildfire. In 1989 in Boston, a pregnant Carol Stuart was killed and her husband, Charles, was shot after he said they were set upon by an African-American man. During the manhunt, police were accused of harassing black men in their search for the killer, while some politicians called for the death penalty.

Mike Barnicle, then a Boston Globe columnist, defended the dragnet: “Where, after everything they had been told, would they expect the cops to start looking? The Myopia Hunt Club?” Charles Stuart, it would soon be revealed, had cashed in his wife’s $82,000 life-insurance policy, bought a new car and, before he could be charged with his wife’s murder, jumped off a bridge to his death.

“The police and citizens were screaming for retribution,” Fitzgerald said. “Police were harassing black males and even publicly humiliating them, and there was this lynch mob in the city. Every black male the police had run into were seen as guilty, [with] particular men [told] to strip down in public as they were searching them. It was about humiliation and control.”

“People walk around with these intergenerational images and stereotypes in this locked closet within their minds, their souls,” he added. “Whenever they are exposed to the language of ‘the other,’ this locked closet opens up, and all of these images come out. It could even come out as policies and programs that discriminate, and stop one having access to resources.”


Never forget. CEPHAS WILLIAMS

“Racial and ethnic inequalities loom large in American society,” according to the Urban Institute, a Washington, D.C.-based think tank founded by Lyndon B. Johnson in 1968. “People of color face structural barriers when it comes to securing quality housing, health care, employment, and education. Racial disparities also permeate the criminal justice system.”

What can be done to undo years of systemic discrimination? Understanding how deep it goes is a start, observers say. “For decades, our researchers have called attention to the role of race and racism in our public and private institutions and offered evidence-based solutions for how to address these inequities,” the Urban Institute added.

“A good number of black people I know are fed up educating people who are not black about what it means to be black,” Williams said. “Most of the time when you see black men in the media or newspapers, if they’re not a victim of knife crime or a perpetrator of violence, they’re a rapper or a football player. It’s a conversation about racism, but it’s also about economics.”

‘A good number of black people I know are fed up educating people who are not black about what it means to be black.’— Cephas Williams, London-based artist

In New York City, the epicenter of the coronavirus pandemic, black and Latino people are being hospitalized at twice the rate of Caucasians, data released last month by the City of New York showed. Black New Yorkers were hospitalized at a rate of 632 per 100,000 people, followed by Latinos (570 per 100,000 people), while Caucasians were hospitalized at a rate of 284 per 100,000 people. “This virus is not hitting New Yorkers equitably,” Health Commissioner Dr. Oxiris Barbot said.

“We’re seeing this around the country,” New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo, a Democrat, said when the figures on racial disparity began trickling out at the beginning of the public-health crisis. He said the same pattern was found in major cities across the U.S., some worse than New York City. “You know, it always seems that the poorest people pay the highest price. Why is that?”

Some point to cases like those of George Floyd and Christian Cooper as merely a glimpse into the disparities people of color face in other aspects of American life, including health care, housing, the media, schools and corporations. Seventy-five percent of all frontline workers during the coronavirus pandemic are people of color, according to the New York City comptroller.

Others say elementary and high schools are places of systemic discrimination. Black students are three times more likely than white students to be suspended or expelled, according to the Education Department’s Office for Civil Rights. Research in Texas found that suspended students are more likely to be held back a grade and drop out of school, the Justice Policy Institute reported.

The economic disadvantages continue long after people of color have graduated from college. Twelve years after entering, white men have paid off 44% of their student-loan balance on average, according to an analysis released last year by Demos, a left-leaning think tank. Black men see their balances grow 11%, and black women by 13%.

White fragility in ‘Whitopia’

“Redlining” housing policies, the refusal of financial services to neighborhoods typically populated by people of color, are still felt today. The term refers to how the Federal Home Loan Bank Board and the Home Owners’ Loan Corporation drew up color-coded maps that designated how risky it was for lenders to originate mortgages in different neighborhoods across the country.

Common in the first half of the 20th century, redlining was outlawed through legislation in the 1960s and 1970s. Yet many of America’s largest cities, particularly in the northern part of the U.S., remain heavily segregated by race or ethnicity. The practice continues to this day, and housing in many redlined areas is still worth significantly less than similar homes in a nonredlined neighborhood.

In his book, “Searching for Whitopia,” Benjamin spent two years traveling 27,000 miles around the U.S., spending time in Coeur d’Alene, Idaho; Forsythe County, Ga.; and St. George, Utah — the areas with the country’s fastest-growing white populations. “I wanted to see why white flight was happening, and how and why white conservatism was developing.”

Housing in many redlined areas is still worth significantly less than similar homes in a nonredlined neighborhood.

They were different in some ways: Georgia was more Baptist than Idaho or Utah, for example, and Utah was more Mormon than Idaho or Georgia. “As the country gets more demographically diverse, all kinds of fears on political issues like taxes, so-called national security, public school funding and immigration are fueled by this fear of white decline,” Benjamin said.

During his travels, from 2007 to 2009, he attended a three-day white separatist retreat with links to Aryan Nations in northern Idaho and in exurban megachurches in the South. “Call these places White Meccas,” he writes in the book. “Or White Wonderlands. Or Caucasian Arcadias. Or Blanched Bunker Communities. Or White Archipelagos. I call them Whitopia.”

“The key commonalities that stuck out was the divide between what was going on in these places and what was going on in Washington,” Benjamin said, who is on record as correctly predicting the result of the 2016 presidential election. “There was a tin ear in Washington and the coast about how violently these places opposed immigration and taxes, and the backlash to the Obama presidency, and a rabid defense of the Second Amendment.”

Last week, one week after the killing of George Floyd, prosecutors charged three more police officers with aiding and abetting, and filed a new, tougher charge against the officer at the center of the case. Protesters lauded the charges, while lamenting that it had taken nearly 10 days to charge all the officers involved. The charges were sought by Minnesota Attorney General Keith Ellison, who called the protests unleashed by the death “dramatic and necessary.”

So what happens now? What can you do? “Your greatest challenge as individuals is, and in perpetuity will be, to hold yourself accountable and to teach your children to do the same," Tiara Darnell, a writer and audio producer based in Buffalo, N.Y. and Portland, Ore., wrote in the latest edition of Portland Monthly magazine. “Your everyday actions and inactions are threads in the larger narrative playing out right now in cities and towns here and around the world.”

‘I no longer have the patience or desire to be deferential to those who get instinctively defensive and lean into their white fragility to gaslight me.’— Tiara Darnell, a writer based in Buffalo, N.Y. and Portland, Ore., writing in Portland Monthly magazine.

Darnell suggests her essay, “Can White Portland’s Fragility Handle a Megaquake?” could also have been entitled, “Can White America’s Fragility Handle a Megaquake?” She writes, “To borrow a term from the lexicon of pandemic, be your own contact tracer: investigate how your inner thoughts and your past and present interactions with the Black people you encounter in your everyday life upholds the values of white supremacy and the white dominant status quo.”

“Maybe, you’re not sure how to talk to your children about racism, but it hasn’t occurred to you that their toys, favorite shows and movies, and maybe even their school, aren’t representative of the diversity of the world,” she added.

Darnell added, “This is the last piece I will ever write and spend my sacred Black energy on that centers whiteness in this way. I no longer have the patience or desire to be deferential to those who get instinctively defensive and lean into their white fragility to gaslight me into believing what I’m seeing and feeling doesn’t exist or ‘can’t be that bad.’”

“So, you hired one or two new Black employees, made (highly problematic) bias training mandatory for everyone, instituted a well-meaning but misguided mandate to use “lunch and learn” instead of brown bag lunch,’ but Black employees are still disillusioned with your internal culture and unwillingness to change. How is that working out?” she wrote.

Racial-justice campaigners say systemic change is needed in the justice system, in law enforcement, the health-care system, the media, education system and throughout American society, adding that undoing a 400-year-old system of systemic racism in a society that built its economy off the slave trade will not happen overnight.

Pernicious racist beliefs and language permeate most people’s language, values upbringing that provide he invisible architecture for a predominantly white society to function. “It can be very difficult to address and tackle racism when it’s not so overt,” Williams said. He said change will have to come in all aspects of society. “There’s a lack of progression in the corporate world and in society, in roles that dictate economic advancement.”

“You have to appreciate the differences and commonalities,” Williams added. “In the cases of George Floyd and Christian Cooper, it was the idea of one race being perceived as superior to the other. There’s a commonality between me as a black man seeing every other black man that has been killed and abused in America and around the world, and feeling that connection.” What can’t happen, he said, is for George Floyd to become just another hashtag.


56 Black Men.

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New York City declares Juneteenth an official holiday
BBC•June 19, 2020

New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio has announced that Juneteenth - the 19 June date which marks the end of US slavery - will become an official holiday.

It comes as millions of Americans plan to commemorate, with marches and personal observances, the 1865 date when the last US slaves were freed.

Several states already observe the day as an official holiday and there is a push to declare it a national holiday.

The date's significance has grown this year amid Black Lives Matter protests.

Mayor de Blasio said in a press conference on Friday that the date would be marked as an official city holiday beginning in 2021, and will also be a public school holiday.

"We'll work with all the unions to work through the plan, give this day the importance and recognition it deserves," Mr de Blasio said. "Every city worker, every student will have the opportunity to reflect the meaning of our history and the truth."

Earlier this week, New York Governor Andrew Cuomo signed an order making Juneteenth - also known as Emancipation Day and Freedom Day - a paid holiday for state workers.

Mr Cuomo said he would introduce legislation to make the day a holiday for all New Yorkers by 2021.

Virginia Governor Ralph Northam also promised to make Juneteenth a holiday by 2021 in the former capitol of the Confederacy which rebelled against the US during the Civil War for the legal right to enslave black people.

In Pennsylvania, Gov Tom Wolf has also signed an order making Juneteenth a holiday for state workers.

"In recent weeks, people around the nation have joined together to demand an end to systemic racism and oppression of African Americans," he said in the statement.

"Freedom for all is not fully realised until every person is truly free. This Juneteenth we have an opportunity to unite against injustice and create lasting change," he continued.

Texas was the first US state to declare Juneteenth a holiday in 1980. Now all but four US states observe or recognise the date in some form.

This year, the date has become particularly prominent in the public consciousness amid a wave of protests over racial inequality following the deaths of several unarmed African Americans. Juneteenth rallies are planned in Washington DC and across the country.

A large group holds a Juneteenth prayer in Atlanta on Friday

A large group holds a Juneteenth prayer in Atlanta on Friday

Explaining the history behind Juneteenth day

What is Juneteenth?

On 19 June, 1865 enslaved people in Galveston, Texas received the news that slavery had been abolished by President Abraham Lincoln two years earlier.

The news took so long to reach slaves in Texas in part due to fighting that continued even after the surrender of the Confederacy that ended the Civil War, according to historians.

The US National Archives said on Thursday that the original handwritten decree is believed to have been recently discovered, after a researcher was tasked with unearthing it due to heightened interested in the holiday.

"The people of Texas are informed that, in accordance with a proclamation from the Executive of the United States, 'all slaves are free,' " the military order reads.

"This involves an absolute equality of personal rights and rights of property between former masters and slaves and the connection heretofore existing between them becomes that between employer and hired labour."

The elaborately written note was found in a book of formal orders in Washington DC.

"I think it's terrific. I think the timing is just amazing," David Ferriero, the head librarian of the Archives, told the Washington Post.
What else is happening?

Corporate America is also treating the holiday with more reverence than in previous years, with employees from Nike, Uber, and Twitter being given a paid day off.

Google has asked employees to cancel non-urgent meetings and instead "create space for learning and reflection".

Amazon told employees to "take some time to reflect, learn and support each other".

In Washington, the most senior Republican in the Senate said on Thursday that he would introduce a bill to make Juneteenth a federal holiday.

Four Democrats have also announced a similar proposal.

In the House of Representatives, the Texas congresswoman who has been pushing for a national holiday for two decades, told CBS that the chances of a holiday becoming a reality are growing.

"The potential of having this national holiday opens a whole world of discussion for America, a whole reckoning with racism and the systemic racism that permeates the nation," said Congresswoman Sheila Jackson Lee, adding that the House proposal now has the endorsement of 204 lawmakers.

"It's delayed freedom, but it is the only recognition of the original sin of this nation," she continued.

Former President Barack Obama, the first and only ever black US president, said in a statement that the holiday "has never been a celebration of victory", but is instead a "celebration of progress".

"It's an affirmation that despite the most painful parts of our history, change is possible - and there is still so much work to do."

His wife, Michelle Obama - whose ancestors were slaves - said that for her, the delayed communication that freed Texas' slaves and the slow pace of equality for black Americans, show that "even in that extended wait, we still find something to celebrate".


Here's what #Juneteenth means to me: pic.twitter.com/KlOoYwdzD5
— Michelle Obama (@MichelleObama) June 19, 2020

100 years ago, Tulsa endured a racial massacre

AFP•June 19, 2020

This image obtained from the American National Red Cross photograph collection at the US Library of Congress, shows Tulsa, Oklahoma, during the May 31 and June 1, 1921, riots when mobs of white residents attacked black residents and businesses (AFP Photo/-)
    

This image obtained from the US Library of Congress, shows Tulsa, Oklahoma aflame during the 1921 during a mob attack on the black district of Greenwood by white residents (AFP Photo/-)

A monument in Tulsa to a 1921 massacre in which a black neighborhood was burned to the ground and as many as 300 peolple were killed (AFP Photo/WIN MCNAMEE)

This image obtained from the American National Red Cross photograph collection at the US Library of Congress, the smoldering ruins of Tulsa, Oklahoma's black Greenwood district after white mobs attacked May 31-June 1, 1921

Tulsa (United States) (AFP) - Tulsa bears the scars of a racial massacre in 1921 that left up to 300 blacks dead, 1,200 buildings burned to the ground and none of the white rioters that committed the violence ever charged.

It started when a young black shoeshiner was accused of assaulting a white woman working as an elevator operator.

As newspapers jumped on the story and rumors spread, the white community in the Oklahoma city became enraged. Hundreds of whites demanding justice gathered outside the courthouse where the black suspect was being held.

Black men, some of them armed veterans of World War I, feared he would be lynched and raced to the courthouse to intervene.

Shots were fired, and bedlam broke out as white mobs attacked the black neighborhood known as Greenwood on May 31 to June 1, 1921.

"Some type of confrontation between blacks and whites was inevitable because of racism that existed because of the presence of Ku Klux Klan members that were part of our local city government, that were on the rosters of the police department and fire department," said Michelle Brown, program coordinator of the Greenwood Cultural Center. An exhibit there commemorates the massacre.

A commission of inquiry formed in 2001 concluded that local authorities armed some white people and named them police deputies and that they added to the violence rather than curb it.

A night of bloodshed ensued as gunfire rang out from both sides, black-owned stores were looted and torched, and homes of black families were shot up.

Many accounts say planes piloted by white men dropped incendiary bobs on Greenwood, which was known at the time as the Black Wall Street because it was one of the most prosperous African-American communities in America. For whites it was a source of envy and jealousy.

For many years, the massacre was not widely known among average white Americans. But the orgy of violence was depicted last year in the TV series "Watchmen" on HBO, and several documentaries on it are being produced, including one by basketball great LeBron James.

The chaos lasted 24 hours and ended only when the National Guard arrived in Tulsa. One of the first things it did was lock up 6,000 black people in internment camps.

At the exhibit on the massacre at the cultural center, there are photos of all the death and destruction.

"There are about 15 or 20 of these photographs that were taken by white photographers that were used as postcards and were sent around the country because many of them were proud of what they had accomplished," said Brown.

The exact number of blacks killed in the massacre is not known because many bodies were thrown into a river, burned or buried in mass graves.

SACRED SOLSTICE

SOLAR ECLIPSE 2020: RARE SUMMER SOLSTICE 'RING OF FIRE' TAKES PLACE THIS WEEK
Annular eclipse coinciding with longest day of the year will not happen again until 2039

Anthony Cuthbertson@ADCuthbertson 6/18/2020

A rare type of solar eclipse will coincide with the longest day of the year this week, marking only the second time since 1982 that these astronomical events take place on the same day.

The annular solar eclipse will see the Sun, Moon and Earth align on Sunday, 21 June, creating a spectacular effect for sky gazers to witness across large parts of the world.

The Moon is at its furthest stage of its orbit around the Earth, known as its apogee, meaning it appears slightly smaller in the sky.

This means it is not able to completely block out the Sun, thus creating what some astronomers refer to as a "ring of fire".

At its maximum point of total eclipse, the Moon will block approximately 99.4 per cent of the Sun, though this will only last for a fraction of a second.
Read more

SpaceX is building Mars spaceports, Elon Musk reveals

Nasa has mapped the trajectory of the annular solar eclipse, which sees its path pass over the Democratic Republic of Congo, South Sudan, Ethiopia, Eritrea, Yemen, Oman, Pakistan, India, Nepal, China, Taiwan and Guam.


The eclipse will not be visible for people in the southern hemisphere, nor in more northerly latitudes like the UK.
The path of the annular solar eclipse on 21 June, 2020 (Nasa/ Google Maps)

It will also be impossible to view from North America, while travel restrictions due to the coronavirus pandemic mean that people will be unable to fly to locations where it will be visible.


For those unable to see it in person, Timeanddate.com will be hosting a live stream of the eclipse on its website.

Solar eclipse 2017
Show all 12





The eclipse occurs on the day that the Sun is at its most northerly point during the year, known as the Summer Solstice in the northern hemisphere and the Winter Solstice in the southern hemisphere.

For those north of the equator, the solstice is the longest day of the year and is often celebrated by watching sunrise or sunset.

In the UK, the sun will rise at 4.43am and set at 9.22pm, meaning people will enjoy 16 hours and 39 minutes of daylight.

More northerly latitudes will experience 24 hours of daylight, including regions of Canada, Greenland, Norway, Sweden, Finland and Russia.

It is the first time since 2001 that the solstice coincides with a solar eclipse, and will not happen again until 2039.

Sunday’s “Ring Of Fire” Solar Eclipse Brings Positive Change


Elizabeth Gulino June 19, 2020, REFINERY29


This weekend, we’ll be experiencing quite the astrological event. Not only is the summer solstice occurring, but we’ll also be undergoing the new moon solar eclipse on June 21 at exactly 12:47 a.m. ET. It won’t be a total eclipse, though: There will still be some surface area of the sun peaking out from behind the moon, creating a stunning “ring of fire” effect.

“Solar eclipses are extra powerful lunar events, rallying the energy of three new moons in one,” Narayana Montúfar, senior astrologer at Astrology.com and Horoscope.com, tells Refinery29. “This one, in particular, is even more important because it happens the same day as the summer solstice and the day the sun enters Cancer.” Montúfar says that this solar eclipse is a turning point in human history, poised to accelerate social change. This particular eclipse is happening at zero degrees Cancer, meaning it will bring emotional needs to the surface.

Montúfar says that at this eclipse, both the sun and the moon will be forming a tense quincunx aspect to task-master Saturn in Aquarius. “At its worst, Saturn represents the rules and limitations that have been imposed on us and that over time have turned corrupt and oppressive,” she explains. “Although Cancer is a sign that would normally want to stay home and feel cozy, this link to Saturn says that the actions we take during this new moon have long-term has consequences.”

These rules and limitations from Saturn may relate directly to the police brutality and abuse of power we’ve been seeing not just recently, but for years. This isn’t the time to sit idly by and let bygones be bygones — this solar eclipse marks the time to take action and use your voice. What you choose to do this weekend in terms of social justice might just have a long-lasting effect.

And, thankfully, the planets are here to back us up. “Mars and Jupiter will be on our side, forming a beautiful sextile,” Montúfar explains. “They will lend us the courage, ambition, and good judgment we need to keep going and keep fighting for what we believe in.”

This particular eclipse also has an interesting Sabian symbol attributed to it. In astrology, images derived from Spiritualist-medium Elsie Wheeler give a description of each of the 360 separate degrees of the zodiac, notes Leslie Hale, psychic astrologer at Keen.com. “The Sabian symbol for zero degrees Cancer is, ‘on a ship the sailors lower an old flag and raise a new one,'” Hale says. This can be interpreted as a change brought about by all of the societal unrest we’re currently experiencing concerning racism, police brutality, and inequality in general.

This celestial event will only be visible across central Africa, the southern Arabian Peninsula, Pakistan, Northern India, and South Central China — but if you’re not in those areas, that doesn’t mean you can’t still take partake in harnessing its power.

“Solar eclipses mark new beginnings. Because of all of the intense energy, it’s important to be clear on your intention in order to manifest your truest desires,” astrologer Lisa Stardust tells Refinery29. “I like to do bath magic when the moon is in a water sign because that way we can harness the power of the element, which in this case is water.”

Interested in performing your own bath magic? Stardust lays it out. “First, write the intention you wish to achieve down on a piece of paper. Be clear and concise. Add a cup of Epsom salt, a dash of cinnamon, rose petals, and charge a rose quartz crystal under the moon to absorb its potency. While in the bath, place the crystal on your heart chakra to heal your emotions and to open yourself to new possibilities,” she says.

Astrologer and occultist Shawntee Cato agrees: Water rituals are the way to go for this particular solar eclipse. “Cancer is a highly nurturing and protective energy,” she explains. “Water is one of the best ways to engage with our spiritual nature as well as ground our energy.”

Cato’s solar eclipse bath ritual looks a little different than Stardust’s — and is simpler. She recommends salt, Florida water (which can be bought through Amazon, Walmart, and other online stores), and a white candle. Crystals are also great to add, especially smoky quartz, black tourmaline, or clear quartz, if you have them. These stones will help maximize your zen under June’s ring of fire eclipse.

This solar eclipse is about taking action. Raise your voice, say what needs to be said, and do what needs to be done. Only good things can come from speaking up for justice.

Trump snubs former EPA chief Pruitt in Tulsa visit

Alexander Nazaryan National Correspondent, Yahoo News•June 19, 2020

WASHINGTON — When President Trump comes to Tulsa on Saturday for his first campaign event since the coronavirus shut down the United States, he will be joined by Oklahoma’s most prominent Republican leaders, as well as rising GOP stars from other parts of the country.

Those expected to stand with the president at the BOK Center are Kevin Stitt, the state’s governor, as well as its two U.S. senators, James Lankford and Jim Inhofe, its four Republican members of the House of Representatives and Sen. Tom Cotton from neighboring Arkansas. Also present will be Reps. Lee Zeldin and Elise Stefanik, ardent defenders of the president who are both from the New York delegation.

One person won’t be there, at least not onstage with Trump and his allies: Tulsa’s own Scott Pruitt, the former Environmental Protection Agency administrator. His absence is a reminder that former Trump Cabinet members rarely leave the administration unscathed.

Pruitt did not return calls from Yahoo News. The Trump campaign did not respond to repeated requests for comment.

The mere mention of Pruitt’s name evokes, for some, the freewheeling early days of the Trump presidency, a pre-impeachment, pre-pandemic time when Pruitt’s search for a used mattress from the Trump International Hotel could credibly pass as the biggest story in Washington.

Then-Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Scott Pruitt in 2018. (Andrew Harnik/AP)

Pruitt was dismissed by Trump shortly after the mattress incident was made public, but the president had clearly been fond of Pruitt, arguing that he was treated unfairly by the media. Yet whatever sympathy Trump may have had for him appears to have expired. That may prove unfortunate for Pruitt, who is only 52 and is widely known to have political ambitions. During the heyday of his tenure, some even suspected he would run for president.

For all the scandal he caused in Washington, Pruitt retained the goodwill of his fellow Sooners. “I think Oklahomans still love him, support him and trust him,” the chairwoman of the Oklahoma GOP told the Associated Press after Pruitt’s dismissal by Trump.

Although he did not seek the governorship of Oklahoma in 2018, as some expected him to do, he was also once rumored to be after a more coveted prize: Inhofe’s seat in the U.S. Senate. At 85, Inhofe is the fifth-oldest member of the entire Congress. Inhofe said in March he would run again, but that was before the coronavirus and anti-racism protests upended virtually every political calculation across the land.
IN THE GOOD OLD DAYS 

Pruitt with President Trump in the White House Rose Garden in 2017. (Andrew Harrer/Bloomberg via Getty Images)

Once in the news on a near-daily basis, Pruitt has been functionally invisible for the better part of a year. “Where in the world is Scott Pruitt?” wondered one headline a year ago. The article noted that he had been spotted at a high-end Tulsa gym, running slowly on a treadmill. He had also registered as an energy lobbyist. There wasn’t much else.

Pruitt’s lonely fate is similar to that of many other top former administration officials. No longer part of Team Trump, removed from the intrigues of Capitol Hill, “formers” like Ryan Zinke (Interior Department) and Reince Priebus (White House chief of staff) are caught in political purgatory.

Some, like Pruitt, Zinke and former Health and Human Services Secretary Tom Price, were quickly undone by attempts to replicate the lifestyle befitting a high-net-worth administration. Living luxuriously on the taxpayers’ dollar angered the public, members of Congress and a president always sensitive to bad news.

Others, like Priebus and former White House press secretary Sean Spicer, succumbed to the chaos and infighting that have characterized the Trump administration from the very start.

Few of the now-formers survived with their reputations intact. Most notable in that category is former Defense Secretary Jim Mattis, who always kept his distance from Trump and, most recently, criticized the president for clearing peaceful protesters from Washington’s Lafayette Square in the midst of the anti-racism protests that swept the nation.

Others have tried to claw their reputations back and exact revenge, often by writing books. Among them is David Shulkin, the former Department of Veterans Affairs head and the lone Obama holdover in the original Trump Cabinet. In his book, Shulkin claims that wealthy conservative allies of the president tried to sabotage his efforts and tried to privatize the agency’s operations.

And then, of course, there is John Bolton, who was dismissed as national security adviser in 2019. The scorned Bolton’s new book contains harsh assessments of the president and his policymaking style.

Pruitt is almost certainly not writing a tell-all book, but he did leave the Trump administration with a flourish, penning a fulsome resignation letter to the boss who fired him. “My desire in service to you has always been to bless you as you make important decisions for the American people,” Pruitt wrote. “I believe you are serving as President today because of God’s providence.”
Being ignored by the Trump campaign is still probably preferable to what happened to Jeff Sessions, the attorney general Trump blamed for the investigation into Russian electoral interference. Fired by Trump, Sessions returned to Alabama and declared he would seek to regain the Senate seat he’d held before joining the Trump administration. 

Trump has instead endorsed former Auburn football coach Tommy Tuberville, also running for the Republican nomination. For good measure, the president lambasted Sessions, the first sitting senator to endorse his improbable White House bid back in early 2016, for having “no courage.

'Whitewashed and erased': There's a reason Juneteenth isn't taught in schools, educators say

WHY WE NEED CURRICULUM TO RECOGNIZE AND ADAPT RUBRICS FOR BLACK HISTORY MONTH, LABOUR HISTORY MONTH, WOMEN'S HISTORY MONTH, LGBTQ PRIDE MONTH, SOUTH ASIAN & ASIAN AMERICAN HISTORY MONTH, DIFFERENTLY ABLED MONTH,  ETC. 
Daniella Silva, NBC News•June 18, 2020



A Connecticut fourth grade social studies textbook falsely claimed that slaves were treated just like “family.” A Texas geography textbook referred to enslaved Africans as “workers.” In Alabama, up until the 1970s, fourth graders learned in a textbook called "Know Alabama" that slave life on a plantation was "one of the happiest ways of life."

In contrast, historians and educators point out, many children in the U.S. education system are not taught about major Black historical events, such as the Tulsa Race Massacre or Juneteenth, the June 19 commemoration of the end of slavery in the United States.

As the country grapples with a racial reckoning following the killing of George Floyd in police custody, educators said that what has and what has not been taught in school have been part of erasing the history of systemic racism in America and the contributions of Black people and other minority groups.
'

Whitewashed and erased': There's a reason Juneteenth isn't taught in schools, educators say

“There’s a long legacy of institutional racism that is barely covered in the mainstream corporate curriculum,” said Jesse Hagopian, an ethnic studies teacher in Seattle and co-editor of the book “Teaching for Black Lives.”

“It’s really astounding how little the contributions of Black people are included in much of the mainstream curriculum and how much of that institutional racism is disguised,” he said.

Historians said curriculums are about identity and learning about ourselves and others.

“The curriculum was never designed to be anything other than white supremacist," Julian Hayter, a historian and an associate professor at the University of Richmond in Virginia, said, "and it has been very difficult to convince people that other versions of history are not only worth telling. They’re absolutely essential for us as a country to move closer to something that might reflect reconciliation but even more importantly, the truth."

LaGarrett King, an associate professor of social studies education at the University of Missouri, said the history curriculums in schools are meant to tell a story and, in the U.S., that has been one of a “progressive history of the country.”

“Really the overarching theme is, ‘Yes, we made mistakes, but we overcame because we are the United States of America,'” said King, who is also the founding director of the Carter Center for K-12 Black History Education at the university.

“What that has done is it has erased tons of history that would combat that progressive narrative,” he said.

King said the experiences and oppression of Black people, Latino people, indigenous people, Asian people and other minority groups in the U.S. are largely ignored or sidelined to fit those narratives.

“So, of course you’re not going to have crucial information such as what happened in Tulsa, you’re not going to have information such as the bombing of a Philadelphia black neighborhood,” he said.

In 1921 in Oklahoma, whites looted and destroyed Tulsa's Greenwood District, known for its affluent Black community. Historians believe that as many as 300 Black people were killed.



In May 1985, Philadelphia police dropped a bomb onto the compound of MOVE, a black liberation group, killing six members, five of their children and destroying 65 homes in the neighborhood.

Another often-omitted period of U.S. Black history is the Red Summer, a period of time through 1919 when white mobs incited a wave of anti-Black violence in dozens of cities.

As for the protests against racial inequality and police brutality after the killing of Floyd and other Black people at the hands of police, King emphasized that these movements were not new.

“Black people have been saying this for the past 400 years, this is not a new movement,” he said. “Each generation has had their point in time where they’re trying to say through protest, through rebellion, ‘listen to us, listen to us,’” he said.

Part of the problem is that society has never listened to that history, he said.

“In many ways we wouldn’t have a Black Lives Matter movement if Black lives mattered in the classroom,” he said.

The current moment has also put increased national attention on Juneteenth, which is Friday this year.

President Donald Trump said in an interview with The Wall Street Journal on Thursday that he moved a rally in Tulsa set for Friday to Saturday “out of respect” for two African American friends and supporters.

“I did something good. I made it famous. I made Juneteenth very famous. It’s actually an important event, it’s an important time. But nobody had heard of it,” he said, although his office has previously put out statements marking the occasion.

Historians note that Juneteenth has been celebrated in Black communities across the country for 155 years.

Hayter said that the history of Black people and other minority communities has already “been completely whitewashed and erased" when it is taught in American classrooms.

He pointed to the argument made by some that removing Confederate statues and iconography is tantamount to erasing history.

“So when people say you can’t erase history, it's like, what are you talking about?” he said. “If you crack open a textbook from the mid-20th century, there are no minorities in those textbooks.”



“The contributions they made to the American democratic experience are completely ignored,” he said.

Hayter said those histories have been seen as “a footnote to a larger narrative and not an important and integral portion of the history more largely.”

“As long as we continue to treat these as addendums to a larger American narrative, we’re failing these kids in large part because we’ve reduced these histories to second-class status,” he said.

Hagopian said “Teaching for Black Lives” seeks to uncover some of these really important periods of Black history and give educators access points to teach students about them, including a whole lesson on the Tulsa Race Massacre.

He said another historical period that was glaringly absent from the mainstream curriculum was Reconstruction, the era following the Civil War that sought to address the inequalities of slavery.

“Reconstruction is one of the most fascinating and revolutionary periods in American history,” he said.

Hagopian said it was a remarkable period of time, although short, when the country undertook a conscious effort to tear down institutionally racist structures.

“Black people built the public school system across the South, and there were integrated schools in the 1860s. They were more integrated than today, just incredible examples of Black empowerment,” he said, adding that there were more Black elected officials than at anytime until recently.

“It’s such an important era to examine," Hagopian said. "If we’re going to escape the intense level of racism that we have today, we’re going to need to look at what it looked like when there was a movement toward institutional anti-racism."

It is also important, Hagopian said, to teach students that the civil rights movement went beyond a few famous figures commonly featured in history books or during Black History Month, such as Martin Luther King Jr. and Rosa Parks.

“I think one of the most important things for students to learn about is the way young people have helped shape American history in profound ways and to help understand the contributions especially of Black youth to this nation,” he said.

“They’re so often erased, but when students learn that it was young people who were the leaders of the civil rights movement, they can then see themselves as potential actors to transform the world today."

For Black Tulsans, Trump's visit evokes painful legacy of 1921 massacre

Ernest Scheyder, Reuters•June 19, 2020

For Black Tulsans, Trump's visit evokes painful legacy of 1921 massacre

By Ernest Scheyder

TULSA, Okla. (Reuters) - Thirteen jars filled with ash and dirt and bone rest in the basement of Tulsa's Vernon African Methodist Episcopal Church, an unsettled repose for the victims of a nearly century-old massacre that still haunts the Black residents of Oklahoma's second-largest city.

There are no graves for Eliza Talbot, Ed Adams or 11 others. Their bodies were lost, along with hundreds, when a white mob killed and burned its way through the city's Greenwood neighborhood in 1921, at the time one of the largest and wealthiest Black communities in the United States.

To the dismay of community leaders https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-election-trump/in-tulsa-fears-that-trump-rally-may-worsen-racial-unrest-spread-of-coronavirus-idUSKBN23O1GO and residents, and just weeks after a May 31 vigil to mark the massacre's 99th anniversary, President Donald Trump plans his first campaign rally since March mere blocks away from Greenwood on Saturday.

The rally will occur a day after Juneteenth https://www.reuters.com/article/us-minneapolis-police-juneteenth-factbox/factbox-what-is-juneteenth-idUSKBN23N3A0, which commemorates when a Union general went to Texas in 1865 and announced the Emancipation Proclamation had freed enslaved people, more than two years after it was issued in 1863.

"Trump's presence will cast a huge shadow over these events," said Rev. Robert Turner of the Vernon A.M.E. church, which was rebuilt after it was burned down during the 1921 attack.

"The president is supported by racists, by neo-Confederates. I fear this rally will attract all those people to our city."

Trump, who has said his supporters "love Black people," moved the rally to June 20 from its original Juneteenth date, tweeting that the change was "out of respect for ... this important occasion and all that it represents."

The rally also coincides with protests against police brutality and racism across the United States and globally, after the May killing of George Floyd https://www.reuters.com/article/us-minneapolis-police-protests/george-floyd-hailed-as-cornerstone-of-a-movement-at-funeral-family-calls-for-justice-idUSKBN23G1JQ by a white police officer who knelt on his neck for nearly nine minutes.

Floyd's death has added to the disquiet among Black residents in Tulsa, which saw its own demonstrations in 2017 after a white police officer was acquitted of manslaughter for shooting a Black man during a routine traffic stop.

"I do look at Trump's visit as a slap in the face, a form of disrespect," said Rev. Mareo Johnson, who runs the Tulsa Black Lives Matter (BLM) chapter.

'SACRED GROUND'

In Greenwood, which was cut in half by a highway in the late 1960s, Black residents say they still struggle with the massacre’s enduring scars.

The district's main thoroughfare, Greenwood Avenue, once boasted the largest Black-owned hotel in the United States as well as Black-owned banks, medical practices, law offices and libraries.

It is now lined with a handful of small retail shops and a restaurant, and abuts a minor league baseball team's field. Tulsa's north side, home to most of its African-American residents, has no traditional grocery stores or much retail shopping, further isolating the residents.

"Greenwood today is confined like a holding zone," said Cleo Harris Jr. who owns Black Wall Street T-shirts and Souvenirs shop on Greenwood Avenue. "The dividing of Greenwood by this highway was white America's way to contain us. Black people are still considered less than."

Greenwood's concentration of wealth in the early 20th century led to the area becoming known as "Black Wall Street." African-Americans made up roughly 12% of Tulsa’s 72,000 population in 1920, as Greenwood’s success and the Oklahoma oil boom attracted other Black Americans.

"Greenwood used to be the mecca of Black opportunity and Black economy. This is sacred ground," said community activist Kristi Williams, whose great aunt survived the massacre.

"This was the place to be for newly-free Africans to re-establish themselves. There are bones in the land that keep us connected to this place."

The massacre began after a local Black youth was arrested for allegedly assaulting a white girl. The allegations were never proven.

White rioters tore through Greenwood, destroying 23 churches, more than 2,000 Black-owned businesses and homes, and 36 square blocks of the neighborhood, according to the Greenwood Cultural Center.

About 300 people died and more than 6,000 survivors and Black Tulsa residents were sent to internment camps and held, according to a Human Rights Watch report in May that called for reparations.

For decades it was not clear where many bodies were buried, but recent archeological work points to a mass grave near the Arkansas River. Dig work at the site was halted this spring due to the coronavirus pandemic.

Tulsa never paid restitution to the victims and insurance companies refused to pay out, citing riot clauses in contracts. No one was charged in the murders. While survivors returned to Greenwood, it never regained its former status.

Some Black Tulsans are hoping to use Trump’s visit to spotlight racial inequity and push for reparations for victims of the 1921 disaster, either through money, scholarships to local colleges or returning land taken from victims.

"I want to channel all this pain and anger into change for our community," said activist Williams.

(Reporting by Ernest Scheyder; editing by Amran Abocar and Grant McCool)

Juneteenth, Decoration Day and the memory of 'these honored dead,' Black and white

Vern E. Smith contributor,Yahoo News•June 19, 2020

African-American band at Emancipation Day celebration on June 19, 1900, in Austin, Texas. (Austin History Center, Austin Public Library)

Growing up in Natchez, Miss., in the ’50s and ’60s, I had never heard of “Juneteenth,” the celebration of the end of slavery in America that took place two states over in Texas. It will be commemorated today with programs, marches and other festivities in communities in the 47 states where June 19 is now an official holiday.

June 19, 1865, which has come to be known as Juneteenth, is the day that Union Army Maj. Gen. Gordon Granger finally arrived in the Texas port city of Galveston, one of the last Confederate outposts, with a stunning announcement known as General Orders, No. 3: “The people of Texas are informed that, in accordance with a proclamation from the Executive of the United States, all slaves are free.”

Texas was the last state to receive the news that President Lincoln’s Emancipation Proclamation had, more than two years earlier, abolished the enslavement of nearly 4 million African-Americans, including 250,000 in Texas.

The news set off spontaneous celebration among the freedmen of Galveston, and beginning in 1866, community events, parades, cookouts, prayer gatherings and musical performances inaugurated Juneteenth. The annual event has continued and spread from a largely Texas tradition to a national celebration of African-American freedom and culture, and a way to empower young people with a sense of their own history. Juneteenth became an official state holiday in Texas on Jan. 1, 1980.

This year, in the wake of the Memorial Day death of George Floyd, an African-American man, under the knee of a white police officer in Minneapolis, which sparked nationwide protests, Juneteenth is a potent reminder of how America’s past and present are inextricably connected. Acknowledging an awakening, over 20 major corporations announced they will either honor or recognize today as a paid holiday for their employees as a nod to support for the Black community, according to CNBC. They include Google, JP Morgan, JCPenney, Target and Nike. General Motors announced it will hold moments of silence at its plants in American cities. There is also renewed push to make Juneteenth a federal holiday.

The new mood is a welcome change, but it is also a reminder that African-American history, which is to say American history, has many hidden figures, traditions and customs.

As a youngster, I was never taught about Juneteenth. But in Natchez we had our own annual unique event celebrating the end of slavery, which also commemorated and honored the participation of African-American ancestors in their own liberation. It was known simply as the “30th of May.’” It was and still is that rare ceremony in the South that celebrates the Union cause in the Civil War, and the valor of the soldiers — “these honored dead,” as Lincoln called them in the Gettysburg Address — who fought and died for that side.
Natchez "30th of May" marchers, circa 1950s. (Courtesy NAPAC Museum)

Like Juneteenth, the 30th of May was a daylong celebration of fun, barbecue, snow cones and hot dogs. It kicked off with an early-morning parade across the Mississippi River Bridge from Natchez in Vidalia, La., and snaked through the downtown district. Flag-carrying veterans, church society women in their white uniforms and regular citizens swelled the ranks as the marchers streamed into the National Cemetery. Vendors with food stands lined the street, and inside the grounds, the marchers placed flowers and flags on the headstones under the sound of a brass band and military gun salute.

I was probably 8 the first time I attended a 30th of May event with my parents and siblings, and even then I was aware that for all the fun and food, there was something serious and important that we were celebrating.

As I would learn later, we were honoring a remarkable and little-appreciated aspect of the Civil War, and the role that runaway slaves played in turning the war into a battle for freedom. Fifty years before the war, Natchez, the oldest European settlement on the Mississippi, had been the site of “Forks of the Road,” the second-largest domestic slave trading center in America. Then, after Union troops arrived in the city in July 1863, the Forks became a staging ground for the liberation of thousands of former slaves.

When the Grand Army of the Republic (GAR), a fraternal organization of Civil War Union veterans, both white and Black, began the national tradition of Decoration Day in 1868, Natchez’s Union casualties, nearly all Black, were interred on the site that is now the Natchez National Cemetery.

In his 2001 book “Race and Reunion: The Civil War in American Memory,” Yale historian David Blight traces the first events of what became known as Decoration Day, and what is now known as Memorial Day, to May 1865, after the first Union troops, including the 21st Colored Infantry, entered Charleston, S.C. At a planters’ racetrack that had been converted into an outdoor prison for Union soldiers in the war’s last year, a group of Black workmen descended on what had been an impromptu mass burial ground for hundreds of Union dead. They reburied them properly and built a high fence around the compound with the inscription “Martyrs of the Race Course,” Blight recounts.
A statue in Galveston, Texas, depicts a man holding the state law that made Juneteenth a state holiday. (David J. Phillip/AP)

Thousands of Black schoolchildren, Black women carrying baskets of flowers and wreaths, and regiments of Black and white Union soldiers joined in a march to the former slaveholders’ racecourse on the first Decoration Day.

Most Southern states would not officially recognize Decoration Day because it honored Union soldiers, says Darrell White, director of the Natchez Museum for African American History and Culture, which was established in 1991 by NAPAC, the Natchez Association for the Preservation of African American Culture.

But in Natchez, where the transition of Black people from slavery to freedom and citizenship came with a heavy price of blood, the 30th of May pilgrimage to the National Cemetery became a lasting tradition.

While word of the Emancipation Proclamation was a long time coming to the enslaved people of Texas, they may have taken some satisfaction in the knowledge that their brethren weren’t just waiting to be told they were free. Almost 200,000 “self-emancipated” Black men had enlarged the Union forces elsewhere in the South and helped seal a Union victory.

Vern E. Smith is the former Atlanta bureau chief of Newsweek.