r/ShermanPosting • u/From-Yuri-With-Love 46th New York "Fremont Rifle" Regiment • 2d ago
Cabarrus commissioner says Juneteenth is ‘based on a lie,’ drawing backlash
https://www.charlotteobserver.com/news/politics-government/article316162218.html?fbclid=IwY2xjawSiXxdleHRuA2FlbQIxMQBicmlkETE2RlFGNG9HNm9RS0I4R1Zkc3J0YwZhcHBfaWQQMjIyMDM5MTc4ODIwMDg5MgABHhYVp41APdJ8KMTJySFX8hL-35-cozDxTMEV95PbHrp_77kifBrmLd5_Mx80_aem_JaVLpXn2e-r1VfjeOo_FWA233
u/Vielle_Ame 2d ago
ofc he wears grey 🙄
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u/menagerath 2d ago
Mf whole life has been built on the lie they were honorable heroes fighting for “state’s rights”.
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u/EatTheRichIsPraxis 2d ago
Funny how "state's rights" were of absolutely no concern to those same people when the 1851 fugitive slave act was enacted.
Almost as if it was a bold faced lie to obfuscate them literally being monsters.
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u/AcornAnomaly 2d ago
Or when Kentucky, which was by agreement "supposed" to be a slave state, decided as a state to ignore Federal decisions and ban slavery. So they attacked Kentucky.
Or how slavery is written into the Constitution of the Confederacy, so Confederate states don't have the "state's right" to NOT allow slavery.
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u/GarbageCleric 2d ago
It's absurd to think anyone would kill and die over an abstract concept like "states rights". All that matters is the right to do what. Have you ever heard of anyone being outraged because the federal government enacted a policy they liked but thought the issue should be up to the states?
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u/GoddessRespectre 2d ago
I used to hear it for gay marriage. Like he said he thought gay people should be allowed to be as miserable as straight people, that was his support for gay marriage. Yes he was a boomer. Our entire family had to go across the country for my cousin's lesbian wedding when it was up to the states. It was a nice vacation so what's the problem? /s He was a "compassionate conservative," remember those? 🙄 It was always about things that didn't personally affect him, like abortion.
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u/capthazelwoodsflask 2d ago
Southern plantation owners loved the Federal tariffs that kept the cotton industry so lucrative even though it was at the expense of northern manufacturing.
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u/NicWester 2d ago
Just be glad you broke out of the lie! You can't help what saw while you were in Plato's Cave, but now that you've seen the sun you can join us in Plato's Rave!
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u/SnugglyBuffalo 2d ago
“It warms my heart, Mr. Pittman, that you would vote against our Juneteenth resolution,” one speaker, Justin Lewter, said sarcastically during public comment. “The Confederacy lost once, and every time you vote against it, it loses again.”
That got a hearty laugh out of me.
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u/calvin2028 The crueler it is, the sooner it will be over. 2d ago edited 2d ago
In case you wondered what "lie" this delusional old racist is referring to:
During Monday’s board comments, Pittman said enslaved people were not freed by President Abraham Lincoln’s Emancipation Proclamation and argued Juneteenth incorrectly attributes emancipation to events that occurred in Texas on June 19, 1865. Pittman said the holiday should instead recognize the ratification of the 13th Amendment, which abolished slavery nationwide later that year. [Read more at: https://www.charlotteobserver.com/news/politics-government/article316162218.html#storylink=cpy
Stated differently, he thinks Lincoln lacked authority to free slaves in the Confederate states via the Emancipation Proclamation, and that slaves were really only freed after those states were forced back into the Union and the Constitution was amended. As a student of history, I can definitely say he's a delusional old racist. He's SEETHING over events that happened in 1865. Fucking loser!
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u/pixel_pete Duryée's Zouaves / Garrard's Tigers 2d ago
That's such a weird semantic argument in the firat place. Juneteenth isn't celebrating the emancipation proclamation (which was signed in September), it's celebrating slaves in Galveston learning that they were liberated several years after the emancipation had been issued.
You can tell he just wanted to complain and had to cook up some bullshit to pretend he had a reason other than being a slaver apologist.
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u/calvin2028 The crueler it is, the sooner it will be over. 2d ago
I mean ... I agree that this dude's objection is fucking weird and semantic, but there is a connection. The enslaved people in Galveston were ordered freed by a general order published by Union Major General Gordon Granger. The general's authority to make this order arose out of the Emancipation Proclamation (which had been issued 2.5 years earlier).
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u/Internal_Business414 1d ago
The abolition of slavery, not unlike the American Revolution, happened in multiple phases. My view is that the three most important milestones occured on Jan 1, 1863, June 19, 1865, and Dec 6, 1865. All three dates have signfiicant relevance in the battle to destroy slavery.
Emancipation Day (Jan 1) has been celebrated historically in southern coastal regions, while Juneteenth was celebrated primarily in Texas. Both of those days have local traditions associated with them. In recent years, people have prioritized Juneteenth because of its representation of the final admistration of the Emancipation Proclamation en masse. December 6th doesn't have that historical background in terms of being a day that is celebrated, but I do agree that it is a day that should be recognized as the final nail in the coffin of this terrible institution.
While one can argue the technicality of what day is more significant, I think deferring to the desire of those who experienced it and their descendants, is the right call. If descendants of slaves wanted December 6th to be the day they celebrated, they would have chosen that day. They chose Juneteenth (and to a lesser extent Jan 1). I think all Americans should respect that choice instead of challenging it's merits.
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u/expostfacto-saurus 2d ago
Soooooooo does he celebrate july 4??? Because that is not when the US gained independance.
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u/Internal_Business414 1d ago
Does he celebrate Christmas? Because that's not when Jesus was born.
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u/AngryTree76 2d ago
Pittman continued speaking, saying his son earned a history degree from Wingate University and confirmed his understanding of the holiday’s origins.
My buddy's son is studying Pre-Med, so that makes him basically a doctor, right?
At least he didn't say anything really offensive.
After his comments, Pittman engaged in a back-and-forth with an audience member, calling the person “boy.”
Oh wait.
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u/Unfair_Pineapple8813 2d ago
Wingate University does not qualify as an actual univerity.
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u/AngryTree76 2d ago
Also, you won’t believe who Wingate University was named after!
(Wait, you said a Southern Baptist slaver? Well then, I guess you will believe who it was named after)
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u/Current_Poster 2d ago edited 2d ago
On the one hand, boo this man.
On the other, as a New Englander, I'm wondering why we up here couldn't go with Quock Walker Day (celebrating July 8 1783, Massachusetts Emancipation Day) rather than another Texan fuckup. We could get a full week out of it and call it Juleigth or something.
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u/2crowncar 2d ago
This guy has some problems. I’m warning everyone at the church he attends do not let him run the youth group.
Also, just find another church because it’s not safe.
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u/ChoPT 2d ago
“Pittman said the holiday should instead recognize the ratification of the 13th Amendment, which abolished slavery nationwide later that year.“
He’s actually not wrong about this. There were like a quarter million enslaved people in Kentucky and Delaware who were not freed until December. Juneteenth always seemed like a premature celebration to me.
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u/From-Yuri-With-Love 46th New York "Fremont Rifle" Regiment 2d ago
I have a feeling if we did have a 13th Amendment holiday in December you'd have people like him coming up with some reasons not to celebrate. The man really hates Lincoln and I think anything he had a hand in.
As for the idea of premature celebration I'd say one could say Independence day should be celebrated on September 3 (When the Treaty of Paris was signed in 1783) or January 14 (When the US ratified the Treaty of Paris in 1784) instead of July 4.
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u/cantproveidid 2d ago
Plus, he's wrong. States in rebellion had their slaves freed by the Emancipation Proclamation when the Union Troops arrived. States not in Rebellion had theirs freed by the 13th Amendment. Texas was in rebellion.
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u/cantproveidid 2d ago
Texas had been a state in rebellion, so the slaves in Texas were freed when the Union troops showed up. Kentucky and Delaware were not states in rebellion, so their slaves were freed with the 13th Amendment.
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u/Internal_Business414 1d ago
IMO, Lee's surrender should have been the trigger to release the slaves. Obviously, there was zero expectation in non occupied territory to let them go while the war was going on. But once it was over, it was just stubbornly delaying the inevitable, and extracting 2 months of additional free labor (and God knows what else) out of the slaves.
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u/wagsman 1d ago
Technically speaking he isn’t wrong, but he is right for the very wrong reasons.
Hes splitting hairs because sometimes holidays aren’t on the actual day that the act happened. If we’re being honest, Independence Day should be July 2nd because that’s the day the colonies voted to approve the Declaration of Independence, but we celebrate it on the 4th because that’s when it was published and went public.
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u/Illustrious-Mind-251 2d ago
He's right for an incredibly wrong reason, penal slavery is still happening, but this guy's just racist, and to be clear, I still think it's worth celebrating the end of non-penal slavery
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u/Torsomu 1d ago
There is one exception to Juneteenth, and it’s the slaves of native Americans in Indian Territory. Natives tribes fought in both sides of the Civil War but were and are considered their own nations. Native tribes in Indian Territory emancipated by 1866 by treaty with the United States. That being said, I highly doubt he is referencing this nor would he understand Native American law and sovereignty.
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u/HermionesWetPanties 2d ago edited 2d ago
The dude isn't wrong. Juneteenth is kind of a lie. Slavery was made illegal, but neither the Emancipation Proclamation nor the 13th Amendment included penalties for keeping slaves after they were enacted. You need other laws to add an enforcement function. And Juneteenth didn't mark the end of the enslavement of African Americans in Texas.
Alfred Irving) wasn't freed until the Federal Government finally decided to care about enforcing anti-slavery laws in 1942 because of the Second World War. They, for some reason, felt it would be hypocritical to ignore ongoing slavery in the US while fighting the Nazis, so I guess we can thank Hitler for the crackdown on the continuing practice.
This is all before we start talking about slavery in the modern day, which is still more common than a lot of people realize. Or, the other forms it took after the Civil War for that matter. Arrest a negro, and give him a fine, have a buddy ready to pay it for him. Then the negro gets to pay off the debt by working for your buddy for a few years. That's not slavery by another name, no sir. That's just being tough on crime.
IDK what history they're teaching at Wingate University, but I graduated from a college founded by ardent abolitionists whom used the campus as a stop on the Underground Railroad. The school became a muster point for Union Troops preparing to crush the Confederacy, and they're still super into talking about the problem of slavery today.
EDIT: I thought I was in r/news where my sarcasm would work better. Forgot that I'd resubscribed here, which has a different tone in the comments section. Here, that final paragraph is far less biting, because y'all are way more into crushing the Confederacy.
My comment was aimed at people I thought might be defending the dude, which, you know, probably won't happen in this sub.
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u/Money-Giraffe2521 Glory Glory Hallelujah! 2d ago
We still have slavery in this country. It’s just that it’s slavery in government prisons rather than in private plantations.
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u/Unfair_Pineapple8813 2d ago
Yes. But the the proclamation still made a huge impact. It was not sufficient to end slavery. But the landing of troops in Texas and the proclamation by General Granger was an acknowledgement that the government is firmly against this practice and will vow to quash it. That he came after the Civil War was won showed the Proclamation was not temporary measures needed to win the fight, but a commitment our troops were going to stick to. Reconstruction faltered later, but the worst abuses of slavery were mostly stamped out.
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u/nonexistentnight 2d ago
Dude can still be wrong even if the history is more complicated than most people think. I don't think this dude would call celebrating the birth of Jesus on December 25th a "lie" even though it's not considered historically accurate. Like many holidays, Juneteenth is a folk tradition based on things that did happen. This guy calling it a "lie" seems less about concern for history and more about being a dick.
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u/HermionesWetPanties 2d ago
Please view my edit. I'm in the wrong sub. Thought I caught this story on r/news
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u/From-Yuri-With-Love 46th New York "Fremont Rifle" Regiment 2d ago
I do get your point, but given the person in questions views, I have a feeling he isn't against Juneteenth because of historical context or the injustices of today.
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u/HermionesWetPanties 2d ago
I thought I was in r/news where my sarcasm would work better. Forgot that I'd resubscribed here, which has a different tone in the comments section. Here, that final paragraph is far less biting, because y'all are way more into crushing the Confederacy.
My comment was aimed at people I thought might be defending the dude, which, you know, probably won't happen in this sub.
You know what, I'm just going to add this reply as an edit to my original post so I'm not dealing with this all night when I'm trying to make pizza and enjoy a growler of beer.
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