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Juneteenth: Christianity, faith, freedom
Originally appeared on spirituality.com
Juneteenth is the oldest celebration commemorating the end of slavery in the United States. Many people think Abraham Lincoln’s Emancipation Proclamation immediately set the slaves free, but without the benefits of today’s instant communication, getting the message to all parts of the South—an area at war—took time. Two and a half years after the Emancipation Proclamation—June 19, 1865—Union soldiers led by Major General Gordon Granger landed in Galveston, Texas, with news that the Civil War was over and that all slaves were free.
This article speaks of the meaning of freedom and how spirituality sustains it, even when one is enslaved.
I remember an old woman who had been a slave. She lived near my grandmother in Columbia, South Carolina. She never talked about what slavery was like—her stories were about how much she and other slaves looked forward to hearing the words of the "preacher."
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