By Allison Perrine
RED BANK – You may know that on June 19, 1865, Black slaves in Texas were freed when federal troops arrived in Galveston and marked the day that is now known as Juneteenth. But how free were they really?
Not very, historian Walter D. Greason, Ph.D., shared in a June 30 virtual event presented by the Red Bank Public Library through its Let’s Talk About Race program. He led attendees through a conversation about how Black freedom evolved after that day in 1865 – and how it continues to progress to this day.
“Juneteenth as a celebration is enormous, but without the growth of investment to grow new businesses, whether it’s along Shrewsbury Avenue or along Liberty Avenue in Long Branch… there’s never been structural wholesale market investment in African and African American communities,” said Greason. “Even in Nigeria where there has been recent both Chinese and European investment on a substantial scale, it’s still lagging behind by not a decade or two, but by centuries.”
A key term Greason used throughout the discussion was the idea of “unfreedom.” He explained that the foundations of American government, built on limited government, gave white citizens “expansive” freedom while all of Black citizens’ rights and decisions were regulated by either their local or state governments. They could only live in certain areas, work in certain occupations and behave in public in certain ways, which did not apply to white citizens.
“If you are a white citizen prior to the Civil War, you feel protected by the fact that states and the federal government have limited powers – that you as an individual have an expansive freedom,” said Greason. “For people of African descent, it’s exactly the opposite… all of your freedoms are regulated. This is a state of unfreedom. It’s this third gray area category where it’s not the expansive freedom that white citizens enjoy; it’s not the strict racial bondage that defines enslavement; but in the middle, so called ‘free Blacks,’ (were) actually not free.”
He gave the example of “laughing barrels” that were placed in alleyways throughout the U.S. At the time it was illegal for people of African descent to laugh in public. Anyone who felt the urge to do so was directed by law to “run into an alley, stick their head into a barrel and laugh into the barrel,” said Greason. “There were literal millions of laughing barrels across the United States because the site and sound of an African American laughing in public was deemed legally offensive and actionable.”
But Juneteenth opened the door to challenge such regulations. As news of the Emancipation Proclamation began to spread, more people started leaving plantations and ran to the Union lines. However, they were still challenged with limitations such as literacy tests and poll taxes. They could not own homes or open checking or savings accounts. There were many political strategies that kept these individuals from accessing greater degrees of freedom, Greason explained.
“To not have access to wealth in the United States is one of the greatest penalties you can impose on someone,” said Greason. “People of African descent, of course, were held as property; it was nearly impossible to accumulate any real assets before 1870. And even after 1870 up until 1920, it was basically miraculous for African Americans to gain access to land and farms and education.”
Many of these barricades have been revoked since that time with the approval of the 13th, 14th and 15th Amendments; the lifting of Jim Crow laws; approval of the Civil Rights and Fair Housing acts in the 1960s; and more. But there are still some challenges in place today, and that is not unique to the U.S., Greason said.
He gave examples of Caribbean counties like Haiti whose economies have stagnated and have a lack of resources “directly connected to the enslavement process that we see in the South and to the process of unfreedom that we see in major northern cities across the United States under Jim Crow,” said Greason.
“You saw growth in Haiti. It was the core of the French empire in the western hemisphere, but with its isolation, by 1900 there’s no growth. By the year 2000 there’s only 2 or 3 percentage point growth,” said Greason. “There’s actually from the global scale down to the local, structural boundaries that maintain unfreedom for people of African descent.”
Greason said it is discussions like the library program that help people find new answers and new questions that can identify better ways to understand the world in more detail. “Juneteenth is about freedom but it’s freedom that we haven’t realized. It’s a freedom we must still pursue and attempt to achieve together,” he said.
This article originally appeared in the July 8, 2021 print edition of The Two River Times.
