Juneteenth is acknowledged with joy, and it should be. Parties, picnics, parades, and celebrations of all sorts make sense, especially when it’s about gaining freedom – the most important benefit we hold as Americans.
But there is a gravely important message within Juneteenth as well. The new holiday calls us to remember a promise made and then deliberately denied.
In the two and a half years between the Emancipation Proclamation and the Juneteenth message read in Galveston, there was no press blackout in Texas. Texas journalists and publications covered and printed news of the nation and the world. Texas’ elected leaders weren’t in the dark. They knew the traitorous confederates had failed, and slavery was outlawed. They continued human oppression, even while knowing that the law said differently. They intentionally denied freedom, deepening the mortal sin and darkening the indelible stain of slavery.
So why make this somber point on a day of celebration? Because it is happening again. More promises made by our nation are being consciously broken and deliberately denied to millions of Texas minority citizens by Texas leaders.
The 14th and 15th Amendments to the Constitution, along with the U.S. Voting Rights Act, promise full rights of citizenship, complete access to the ballot, and protection against racial discrimination. Yet again today, those rights promised to minority Texans are being denied by Texas Republican leaders.
Overt racial gerrymandering of districts at every level – Congress, the Legislature, and County Commissioner Precincts – is the modern tool of choice for Texas Republican leaders. It’s how they keep an iron grip on control of Texas even though Anglos barely make up 40 percent of the Texas population.
In map after map, Black, Hispanic, and other minority citizens are targeted and then either packed into a few minority-controlled districts or cracked across many districts controlled by Anglo voters who favor Republican candidates. Instead of using an ounce of political capital to win over the votes of minority Texans legitimately, Republican leaders configure and adopt maps that undermine minority rights and voting strength.
And today’s Texas leaders camouflage their suppression and discriminatory intent by cynically calling it “partisanship.” They claim to be “race-blind” even though they target Black and Hispanic voters with pinpoint accuracy. They use “partisanship” like a password, giving them license to discriminate and then bet that the courts and the press will buy it.
It’s happening in Tarrant County now. Racist Republican County Judge Tim O’Hare bullied through an obviously racially discriminatory map. He wiped out a majority-minority commissioner district that he was unable to win legitimately. All the while, he claimed only partisan intentions.
It’s getting ready to happen in Texas Congressional districts. A full five years into the decade, Republican leaders in Austin are ready to do the bidding of Donald Trump and redraw the Texas Congressional map to add more Republican seats. Texas is a majority-minority state, and Anglo Republicans already control 25 of the 38 Texas Congressional seats. The only way Republicans can get more seats without endangering one or more Republican members is to undermine minority citizens’ voting rights even further.
So maybe it’s best that we think of Juneteenth as something more than a worthy celebration of a historical event. Let’s make it a yearly recommitment to keep the promises that a moral democracy makes to its citizens and a renewed pledge to stand against those who fail us all by breaking sacred promises.
Matt Angle is Director of the Lone Star Project. Prior to founding the Lone Star Project, Angle spent over 20 years as a congressional staff member observing and participating in a number of leadership races.
