Wednesday, June 19, 2019

Juneteenth

Ralph Ellison's Invisible Man (1952) is one of the great works of American literature. In 1999, five years after Mr. Ellison died, at age 80, his novel Juneteenth was released. He had worked on the novel for decades, yet it remained unfinished at his death. His literary executor, John F. Callahan, a professor at Lewis & Clark College, assembled the book from some two thousand pages of manuscript and notes Mr. Ellison had written.

https://www.amazon.com/Juneteenth-Novel-Ralph-Ellison/dp/0394464575/ref

In 2010, a much longer version of the novel--Three Days Before the Shooting--was published. The book, made up of more than one thousand of the two thousand pages of material Mr. Ellison had left behind, was edited by Mr. Callahan, and writer/critic Adam Bradley, professor at the University of Colorado, Boulder.

https://www.amazon.com/Three-Days-Before-Shooting/dp/0375759549/ref

Today, June 19th, marks the observance of the day known as Juneteenth--June 19, 1865, two months after the conclusion of the Civil War--when the end of slavery in Texas was officially carried out. The holiday commemorates not only the end of slavery in Texas, but, more broadly, its abolishment in the United States as a whole.

As noted on Wikipedia: "Texas was the most remote of the slave states, and the Emancipation Proclamation of January 1, 1863, was not enforced there until after the Confederacy collapsed." Says Wikipedia: "On June 18, Union Army General Gordon Granger arrived at Galveston Island with 2,000 federal troops to occupy Texas on behalf of the federal government. The following day, standing on the balcony of Galveston's Ashton Villa, Granger read aloud the contents of  'General Order No. 3', announcing the total emancipation of those held as slaves."

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Juneteenth

Here is a story from CNN.com, today, about observances of Juneteenth. Pennsylvania, today, became the latest state to officially recognize the holiday; four states have yet to do so.

https://www.cnn.com/2019/06/19/us/juneteenth-state-holidays-trnd/index.html