On Juneteenth
Heather May
On Juneteenth
Pieces of speeches stretch across my screen –
each tab unfinished business
we learn as gospel truth.
Founding fathers perform magic tricks,
distract with dazzling ideals:
All men created equal
Free!
to pursue life, liberty, and happiness.
We slumber in the American Dream,
missing the sleight of white hand
hiding Black humanity
in mathematical equation.
Three
Fifths
“What to the Slave is the Fourth of July?”
Frederick Douglass asked
Forty-seven miles
and one hundred and sixty-nine years away.
“The rich inheritance of justice
Liberty
Prosperity
and Independence
bequeathed by your fathers
is shared by you
Not by me.”
My fathers
Forefathers
bequeath me
History as an endless march
towards equality –
white savior complex:
Abraham Lincoln “freed the slaves”
And eight hundred and ninety-nine days later
General Gordon Granger
Rode into Galveston
To liberate enslaved people
By telling them about it.
Harriet Tubman might have something
to say about that.
Moses was the true magician.
Her math restorative,
computed in the mind
to leave as little as possible behind.
Fourteen journeys.
At least sixty enslaved people
Struggling their way
to freedom
Together.
Her words as elusive
as the unknown number
of Black enslaved people
who freed themselves
against all odds.
Risking everything.
What to me is Juneteenth?
Second Independence Day
Black Independence Day
Jubilee Day?
It’s the day I catch my forefathers
in their sleight of hand.
A promise
Still unfulfilled.
Old math.
Proclaim liberation
while 2.3 million Black Americans
remain shackled in jail.
National holiday
commemorating a history
it’s illegal to teach
in five states.
And yet
It is also the day we celebrate
the full (and yet unfulfilled) acknowledgement
of the humanity
and freedom of all Americans
take one step closer to
the land that never has been yet
and remember the immeasurable strength
of the true liberators
of Black Americans.
Themselves.