Juneteenth Unlimited

I was raised in South Carolina. In school, I learned slavery was established throughout the South.  I could feel it in the air I breathed, and on the ground I walked upon.  In later years, I also learned, my Southern Baptist church was an intrinsic part of this history.  The former slaveholders established a church for ex-slaves, some time after slavery ended.  My family members helped build that church.  Prior to the abolishment of slavery, my family attended church services with the "slave-owners".  Both churches are still standing and active today.  I recently relocated back to the area where I was raised.  It feels haunting at times, when I think of the old roads, old shacks, old fields, old sunrises, and the old dehumanizing ways,  the slavery system defiled everyone and everything.  

The following excerpts are from Frederick Douglass’s third autobiography, Life and Times of Frederick Douglass, published in 1892.  Excerpted from the chapter entitled: “HOPE FOR THE NATION”  The Passage of the Emancipation Proclamation

Every moment of waiting chilled our hopes, and strengthened our fears. A line of messengers was established between the telegraph office and the platform of Tremont Temple, and the time was occupied with brief speeches from Hon. Thomas Russell of Plymouth, Miss Anna E. Dickinson (a lady of marvelous eloquence), Rev. Mr. Grimes, J. Sella Martin, William Wells Brown and myself. But speaking or listening to speeches was not the thing for which the people had come together. The time for argument was passed. It was not logic, but the trump of jubilee, which everybody wanted to hear. We were waiting and listening as for a bolt from the sky, which should rend the fetters of four millions of slaves; we were watching, as it were, by the dim light of the stars, for the dawn of a new day; we were longing for the answer to the agonizing prayers of centuries. Remembering those in bonds as bound with them, we wanted to join in the shout for freedom, and in the anthem of the redeemed.  Eight, nine, ten o’clock came and went, and still no word. A visible shadow seemed falling on the expecting throng, which the confident utterances of the speakers sought in vain to dispel. At last, when patience was well-nigh exhausted, and suspense was becoming agony, a man (I think it was Judge Russell) with hasty step advanced through the crowd, and with a face fairly illumined with the news he bore, exclaimed in tones that thrilled all hearts, “It is coming!” “It is on the wires!!” The effect of this announcement was startling beyond description, and the scene was wild and grand. Joy and gladness exhausted all forms of expression, from shouts of praise to sobs and tears. My old friend Rue, a colored preacher, a man of wonderful vocal power, expressed the heartfelt emotion of the hour, when he led all voices in the anthem, “Sound the loud timbrel o’er Egypt’s dark sea, Jehovah hath triumphed, his people are free.”  About twelve o’clock, seeing there was no disposition to retire from the hall, which must be vacated, my friend Grimes (of blessed memory), rose and moved that the meeting adjourn to the Twelfth Baptist church, of which he was pastor, and soon that church was packed from doors to pulpit, and this meeting did not break up till near the dawn of day. It was one of the most affecting and thrilling occasions I ever witnessed, and a worthy celebration of the first step on the part of the nation in its departure from the thraldom of ages.