Letting "a thousand Juneteenths bloom," and unearthing the Catholic Church's role in American slavery.
 | By Vanessa Mobley Op-Ed Editor |
Long before 2021, when Juneteenth became a federal holiday marking the day in 1865 that Gen. Gordon Granger proclaimed freedom for the enslaved people of Texas, it was being celebrated by communities across America in large and small ways. |
In a guest essay, Tiya Miles describes how "discovering where Juneteenth events were held, who organized them and who turned out was like holding a black light to the invisible-inked map of the present and past African American community." Miles, a historian whose guest essays have a singular way of using the past to understand the present, wonders in her latest piece if nationalizing the holiday detracts somewhat from its earlier, ad hoc magic. "When we allow corporations and distant event planners to hijack Juneteenth, we lose the texture of these various places and their particular commemorations," she writes. "We share the responsibility to prevent that." |
At the time of the event Juneteenth commemorates, the enslaved people of Texas had waited two-and-a-half years for word of President Abraham Lincoln's Emancipation Proclamation to reach them. In another guest essay that explores memory and history in the lives of Black Americans today, Rachel Swarns, a contributing writer to The Times and the author of "The 272: The Families Who Were Enslaved and Sold to Build the American Catholic Church," describes how Black Catholic families like her own often did not know about the history of the church's relationship to the slave trade.
As a reporter in 2016, she "got a tip about the prominent Jesuit priests who sold 272 people to raise money to save the college we now know as Georgetown University, the nation's first Catholic institution of higher learning." Her guest essay reflects on the challenge posed by her discovery of the central role that the slave trade played in the church's expansion in the United States, and asks why newly freed people — and generations of Black Catholics after them — would continue to be members of the church. |
Swarns seeks to understand the role of history in one of the most personal aspects of identity: faith. Her essay concludes with a stirring thought: "I am inspired by the families who pressed the church to be true to its teachings. Their history is one of struggle and resistance, family and faith. Unearthing their stories has deepened my connection to Catholicism and transformed my understanding of my own church." |
As all Americans celebrate the newest federal holiday, we hope these two essays offer ways to reflect on the centrality of faith and community in that history. |
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