On June 19, 1865, soldiers arrived in Galveston, Texas with news that the War Between the States had ended and that those enslaved were now free. This news came two and a half years after President Lincoln had signed the Emancipation Proclamation. June 19 has become a day of celebration of freedom from one of the darkest periods of American history.Slavery is a terrible mar on the history of this great nation. The dehumanization and degradation of people, based merely upon their ethnic background and skin color is abhorrent and disgusting. It goes against everything we as a nation stand for. The fact that human beings were shackled, forced to live in squalor, treated with complete inhumanity, and often murdered should haunt every American to the point that we vow never to allow such treatment to occur to anyone, for any reason.
So, on June 19, we celebrate the long awaited freedom and the official end of a national travesty. Some four million individuals were officially freed. While it took many decades for the remaining vestiges of the mistreatment to end, and some would argue that it continues still, Juneteenth celebrates the end of the Federally sanctioned dehumanization under which so many had toiled. It was a massive step forward in the ever evolving societal structure of America.
I dream of a day when we will celebrate another kind of Juneteenth. A time when another group of people will be no longer dehumanized and treated as property to be cast aside at the whim of those who hold power over their lives. A time when Americans no longer sanction the wholesale slaughter of over 650,000 preborn children each year. A time when it no longer seems normal that forty to fifty million children around the world annually have their lives stolen from them before they are even born.
We look back with sadness and regret that religious people owned slaves, argued in favor of slavery, abused others, and even fought in defense of the institution of slavery. We look back in shame that people allowed themselves to be deceived into believing there was some sort of biblical justification for their institutionalized racism and ethnocentrism. We should be ashamed of that time in history.
We should also be ashamed that since abortion was declared legal in the United States, roughly 48,000,000 babies have been killed within their mothers' wombs. And, just as the citizens of Germany ignored the trainloads of Jews heading toward the death camps, and the ash and smoke and horrendous smell in the air as they were slaughtered and cremated right down the road from their cities, Americans have turned a blind eye to the largest mass murder in history. In fact, many have applauded it.
May God have mercy on our souls.
May the bloodshed please end soon. And may we someday look back with sober remembrance on the celebration of the end of the war on the unborn.
