Juneteenth Means We Can’t Give Up On America

The same Sun shone upon the unabridged joy of our ancestors on the first Jubilee June 19, 1865.

Happiest day, beloved Joy Train Rider! I love you! Bless you! I affirm we are doing well.

Juneteenth today makes me wonder what percentage of the United States’ development can be traced to the contributions of African-descended people? If such a metric exists, it would have to be highly disproportionately large, related to our numbers.

From what I learned in our National Park System, Black people in America have labored hardest, along with Americans of every ethnic group, in building and defending our country. Few would argue that the harshest costs of creating the country we enjoy today fell heavily on the backs of enslaved Africans.

Google gave me the AI synopsis:

“It is impossible to assign a single, exact mathematical percentage to America’s development traced to Black Americans, as their contributions span both forced and free labor, cultural innovation, and economic output. However, scholars measure this impact in several specific and vital ways. . .”

I will never give up on the vision of an America that lives up to our ideals. I will never stop seeing the land as the repository of our ancestors’ blood, sweat and tears, sacrifice, aspiration and inspiration. The investment they planted gives us a huge stake in this country.

I’m concerned that we don’t know the facts well enough to counter demeaning attacks and claim our rightful history in America as the people upon whose backs this nation was demonstrably built. If we knew the facts we might not feel so inclined to give up on our country in reaction to the terror and gaslighting of a sector that wants us to do just that.

In the 1990s and the early days of advocacy on behalf of the National Park System I often found myself trying to inspire others at the table by telling them how eagerly Black Americans take to Nature and the outdoors once they get connected. I thought they must not know, and that they’d be so excited to hear it.

It was years before I realized that these facts hardly seemed to make a difference to the prevailing party line, which was “‘minorities’ don’t care.”

Now we’re showing at scale how much we care, one of the most exciting examples being birder Christian Cooper’s elevation on the national stage, arising from an attempt to erase him in Central Park several years ago.

Similarly, the administration’s attempts to white out African-American history in our National Park System is raising public awareness as never before. The numbers of outdoors and National Parks-focused organizations is exploding on Facebook. In that I take inordinate pleasure and joy. And I’m so happy to learn of the Resistance Rangers are helping archive and present pieces of history targeted for suppression:

All of us can assist Preserving National Park Stories Before They’re Lost.

I’m seeing a lot about “Joy as Resistance” in my newsfeed, and I’m so glad I’ve been trying to create and share that here for the past four years.

Spending time with our beloved daughter who’s visiting makes Juneteenth all the more enjoyable.

Until today I did not know that our ancestors considered this day a Jubilee, and used the term for their celebrations in the 19th and early 20th centuries. That word brings such lightness to me.

Today let’s go back with the National Park Service to the effect of the Proclamation: