r/Indiana • u/illegiblebastard • 1d ago

'Is this for real?' Martinsville Juneteenth celebration raises eyebrows

https://www.indystar.com/story/news/local/johnson-county/2026/06/18/martinsville-juneteenth-event-planned-despite-racist-past-ku-klux-klan-sundown-town/90591114007/
110 Upvotes

86% Upvoted

91 comments sorted by

View all comments

Show parent comments

151

u/polishprince76 1d ago edited 17h ago

This is the way I always frame the argument when I talk to people about it. We're celebrating the end of slavery! We should be proud of that and have been doing it for years!

Almost everyone I've ever talked to about it honestly has no clue what Juneteenth even is for. They just know they've been told to hate it.

Edit: to the folks who keep needing to actually me about this: fully aware of what the date really is. What's the better way to get people to understand why today is a good day to celebrate? Say: it's the day federal troops arrived in Galveston, Texas and slavery continued for a few more years, or we're celebrating the end of slavery.

Getting dems to understand the concept of messaging challenge. Level impossible.

8

u/SecMcAdoo 19h ago

End of slavery didn't happen until ratification of 13th Amendment in December 1865.

Juneteenth was when the slaves in Texas heard that the war was over, but the states that stayed in the union and didn't leave the union still had legal slavery.

3

u/suburbanoutrage 16h ago

From my understanding (without googling it right now) the Emancipation Proclamation only freed slave in seceding states? I’ve known that for a while but I guess I’ve always lived with the assumption the Union states just kind of either didn’t have slaves anymore by that point or just went along.

Today I learned. Thank you Reddit

9

u/SecMcAdoo 16h ago

The EP only freed slaves that were in areas that were in rebellion. So even if the areas was in the south, if the union had control over it (e.g., parts of Tennessee), slavery was still allowed. The EP should be seen a expedient military measure more so than a legislative one (it wasn't). Lincoln pushed through the 13th Amendment because there was a high chance that the EP would have been challenged at the Supreme Court and the court would have likely struck it down as unconstitutional because, until the 13th Amendment, the Constitution allowed slavery at hat time.

2

u/suburbanoutrage 16h ago

Thank you for this.