Annette Gordon-Reed - Juneteenth-Notes

 Professor Gordon-Reed, a proud native of Texas, is a professor of history at Harvard University.  She is most well-known for her work on Thomas Jefferson and Sally Hemings.  She is a recipient of a Pulitzer Prize for her work on the Hemings family.

This slim book is personal remembrance, an explanation of Juneteenth, and ultimately an explanation of why she still loves Texas despite its racial history.  A hard row-to-hoe I'm sure.

She singly integrated her elementary school in Conroe, Texas.

White enslavers in Texas generally did not handle the emancipation announcement on 6/19/65 well. Resistance was huge and sometimes violent in Texas.  This action was taken from Galveston, then the largest city in Texas, from the Emancipation Proclamation issued by President Lincoln in 1863 not on the 13th Amendment which did not pass Congress until December of 1865,

The author talks about her family celebrating Juneteenth when she was growing up in Texas.  I had no idea the celebrating has been going on so long in the Lone Star State.  It was a tradition in her family to do fireworks which they did and  to eat BBQed goat though she says it was not a common tradition with the BBQ in Texas.  Her family did not honor that meat tradition.

The author has obvious affection for Texas with all of her memories but she doesn't shy away from proper criticism.  After all, she is a meticulous historian.  She finds a way to accept Thomas Jefferson without overlooking his many shortcomings.

Travis left a young wife with two young kids in Alabama.  Bowie bought and sold slaves.  All of the Texas heroes have serious flaws.

CODA

The author explains that despite the difficulties of racial history in this country with Texas being front and center for her, she still loves Texas because that is where she grew and hence her family memories.  At the same time she is properly critical of both her country and her state of Texas.  She refers to Jefferson's Notes and Jefferson's contentions that slaves could not love their country because of the way they have been treated.  For this author, Jefferson was wrong.