INTRODUCTION
This nationally celebrated holiday marks the freeing of slaves, and was first observed in Galveston, Texas in 1865. Though African slaves were freed after the civil war, they faced more than a century of hardship and oppression. This began to shift during the Civil Rights Movement of the 1960’s, and continues to improve today as the United States boasts its first African American president. Before and since Juneteenth, many African Americans have enjoyed a variety of accomplishments and significantly contributed to this society. Juneteenth emphasizes education and achievement.
POEM
This nationally celebrated holiday marks the freeing of slaves, and was first observed in Galveston, Texas in 1865. Though African slaves were freed after the civil war, they faced more than a century of hardship and oppression. This began to shift during the Civil Rights Movement of the 1960’s, and continues to improve today as the United States boasts its first African American president. Before and since Juneteenth, many African Americans have enjoyed a variety of accomplishments and significantly contributed to this society. Juneteenth emphasizes education and achievement.
POEM
FREDERICK DOUGLASS
By Robert Hayden
When it is finally ours, this freedom, this liberty,
this beautiful
and terrible thing, needful to man as air,
usable as the earth; when it belongs at last to our
children,
when it is truly instinct, brainmatter, diastole, systole,
reflex action; when it is finally won; when it is more
than the gaudy mumbo jumbo of politicians:
this man, this Douglass, this former slave, this Negro
beaten to his knees, exiled, visioning a world
where none is lonely, none hunted, alien,
this man, superb in love and logic, this man
shall be remembered – oh, not with statues’ rhetoric,
not with legends and poems and wreaths of bronze alone,
but with the lives grown out of his life, the lives
fleshing his dream of the needful beautiful thing.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Adoff, Arnold, Ed. 1997. I AM THE DARKER BROTHER: AN ANTHOLOGY OF MODERN POEMS BY AFRICAN AMERICANS. New York: Simon & Schuster Books for Young Readers. ISBN 0689808690
EXTENSION
As the poem states, Frederick Douglass was a former slave, and a leader in the abolitionist movement to end slavery in the United States. He was a published author and known as a brilliant speaker. Douglass even served as an adviser to President Abraham Lincoln during the Civil War (Thomas). This poem about Frederick Douglass captures the essence of what Juneteenth celebrates – education, achievement, reflection, rejoicing, self-assessment and improvement within the African American community. What do you think? Can you think of anyone else with these qualities?
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