Forgetting History

America has just celebrated Juneteenth, a federal holiday created to recognize the freeing of black slaves in Texas two years after Lincoln issued the Emancipation Proclamation. To their shame, many people celebrated Juneteenth this past weekend with unpermitted street parties, full of drugs, booze and twerking. If their conduct represented their understanding and appreciation for the holiday, it was badly misplaced. They have forgotten the basis for the holiday; they have forgotten the sacrifices made on their behalf so that such a holiday might exist. They have forgotten the blood, and death, and humiliation that hundreds of thousands of Americans took on so that there might be a reason to celebrate June 19th.

America suffers from a chronic ignorance of history. Dr. Victor Davis Hanson has written extensively about that ignorance. Others have as well. Unfortunately, the media, the main source of information for most Americans, are either themselves ignorant of American history or have chosen to ignore it. Common sense says that the latter is the explanation for the near total absence of any meaningful discussion of history in the public forum.

Those celebrating Juneteenth might do well to recall the scorn and personal attacks that President Lincoln received and withstood as he hewed to the principle that no man ought to profit from the sweat of another. They would do well to recall that white American Congressmen spoke eloquently in the halls of Congress for years urging the abolition of slavery only to be shouted down by Southern Democrats. Juneteenth celebrants ought to remember that in 1856, five years before the Civil War, Charles Sumner, a Republican abolitionist from Massachusetts was beaten nearly to death with a cane by Preston Brooks, a Senator from South Carolina on the floor of the U.S. Senate because of Sumner’s position on slavery.

The Juneteenth celebrants have, evidently, forgotten that the Democrat Party was the main proponent of slavery. One of the foundational reasons for the creation of the Republican Party was to oppose slavery! That single fact alone ought to change the tone of the celebration. The position of the Dems was that each state should be allowed to decide for itself whether it wanted the choice of owning slaves. Of course, the Democrat Party gave that choice to everyone except the slaves, who had no choice.

Hundreds of thousands of Americans died in a war which had as a principle purpose the abolition of slavery. The Democrat Party didn’t stop treating black Americans as second-class citizens just because the Civil War was over. The Dems doubled down, creating the Ku Klux Klan, terrorizing freed slaves and attacking whites who supported them.

While celebrating Juneteenth, it would be well to recall that it was the Democrat Party that passed the “Jim Crow” laws throughout the South that enforced segregation, even to the extent of having separate drinking fountains and bathrooms. The Democrat Party was the organization that passed the egregious laws that were designed to prevent freed slaves from voting. And yet, President Biden has the temerity to accuse the people of Georgia of adopting “Jim Crow II” voting laws that have led to increased voting by African Americans. That claim is particularly rich coming, as it does, from a Democrat and well-established ally of segregationists in the Senate. It was the Republican Party that drove the effort in Congress to pass civil rights legislation to ensure black Americans were covered under the law by the equal protection guarantees of the Constitution in spite of opposition by Democrats who did everything they could to prevent those law from passing. It is fair to ask whether any of the Juneteenth celebrants remember that.

Historical ignorance is rampant in America. It has been fostered by educators who have failed to educate and have, instead, promoted a false version of history. It has been fostered by the demagogues of the Left who have seen in the ignorance of voters an opportunity to divide America further. It has even been fostered by many of the so-called “leaders” within the African American community who have profited from the promotion of a victimhood doctrine, teaching those who would listen that they have been oppressed and held back.

Juneteenth ought to be about the vision of a president, Abraham Lincoln and the sacrifice of hundreds of thousands of Northern soldiers, mainly white men, who died to vouchsafe the freedom of black slaves. They are owed a debt of gratitude that can never be repaid whether the Juneteenth celebrants wish to acknowledge that or not.

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