Juneteenth

 

Celebration of Emancipation Day in Richmond, Virginia, 1905.

Juneteenth, June 19^th is now a federal holiday in the U.S.. In fact, it has been celebrated, especially in Texas, to commemorate the original announcement there, two and a half years late, of The Emancipation Proclamation of 1863. Although the holiday name is new to some, it has long been viewed as a major celebration, especially for and by black Americans. Interestingly, I noticed on the Merriam-Webster website [an impeccable source!] evidence of considerable and consistent use of the word since the late 19^th century.

“Last Wednesday the citizens of this city and vicinity, native Texans, assembled in the fair grounds to commemorate the thirtieth anniversary of the liberation of the bonded Afro-American of Texas.

...Closely following the speakers an animated game of baseball was witnessed, when this happy throng repaired to their homes expressing themselves as highly pleased with their first Juneteenth celebration.”

Parson’s Weekly. [Parsons KY] 22 June 1895.

Sherman people celebrated the Juneteenth at the beautiful Fred Douglas school grounds and the handsome Wood Lake park pavilion, midway between Sherman and Denison, on the electric railway.

Freeman [Indianapolis IN] 27 June 1908.

June 19^th, or, as it is humorously referred to, ‘Juneteenth’ is the day the news of the emancipation proclamation reached Texas, so annually the day is celebrated much as we do the Fourth of July.

Chicago Defender, 3 July 1915.

Tennessee has just banned Critical Race Theory from its schools.

My only surprise at the above quotations is that Texas has never seemed the most non-racist, diversity-encouraging, liberal state! And indeed, it wasn't; the formal Emancipation announcement was imposed on Texas by the Army. I am beginning to write this on Juneteenth, a celebratory date of which I had not heard until perhaps two or three years ago. What recently drew my attention to it was reading that Republicans are setting out to ban Critical Race Theory from school syllabi. I think that Critical Race Theory [CRT] is an academic theory that underlines the critical effect of race on identity and on law-making in America. I would guess that there is a much more extended and sophisticated academic explication of CRT but that is the basis. And that basic truth seems undeniable in any country but overwhelmingly so in America.

That all said, I had a mind, this Juneteenth, to explore Bristol, in England, where a statue of Edward

Edward Colston now housed in
Bristol Museum.

Colston, a prominent slave trader and municipal benefactor, was toppled from its plinth and thrown into the harbour during a Black Lives Matter demonstration in 2020. I am humbled, and aghast, at my discovery of a whole library of slavery information about Bristol and its eminent men of wealth during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. Slaves became an increasingly important commodity during the 17^th

Aboard a slaving ship.

century as the British colonisation of the Caribbean and the Americas progressed rapidly; cheap labour was urgently needed for various colonies to work on sugar, rum, tobacco and cotton plantations. The Society of Merchant Venturers, an organisation of elite merchants in Bristol, wanted to participate in this lucrative commerce and eventually, in 1698, they managed, with help from business-men with similar commercial interests in Hull and Liverpool, to break the trade monopoly of the Royal African Company, a powerful London-based group which had controlled all trade between Britain and Africa between 1672 and 1698. As soon as the monopoly was broken, Bristol commenced its participation though there is some evidence for Bristolian illegal slave trade before that date. The first legitimate slave ship from Bristol was the Beginning, owned by Stephen Barker, which purchased and ferried a cargo of enslaved Africans and delivered it to the Caribbean in 1698. In her will of 1693, Jane Bridges bequeathed her share of £130 in this ship, to her grandson, Thomas Bridges and her will indicated that the ship then belonged to the city of Bristol. A full-rigged ship was the essential technology which enabled the transatlantic slave trade to flourish.

Selling slaves in a slave market.

Bristol became one of the biggest centres of the transatlantic slave trade between 1725 and 1740 when up to an estimated 20% profits were made from slave-trading from the city. By the 1730s an average of 39 slave ships left Bristol annually and between 1739 and 1748, there were 245 slave voyages from Bristol, an estimated 37.6% of the whole British slave trade. In the later years of slave-trading, Bristol’s share decreased to 62 voyages while Liverpool’s share increased to 62% or 1,605 voyages. An estimated 2108 slaving traders departed from Bristol between 1698 and 1807 with the average number of slaves per ship believed to be around 250. Thus in a century plus, Bristol’s merchants trafficked more than 500,000 enslaved Africans to the Caribbean and North America. But, it must be added, that estimates suggest that up to half of each ship's slave cargo would perish en route, due to the harsh conditions aboard and the overcrowding. In any event, not a figure to be proud of!

The so-called triangular trade describes the route followed by English merchants from Bristol [or Liverpool or Hull] to north-west Africa, the Caribbean and America during the same period, i.e. 1698-1807. Bristol ships traded their goods for enslaved people from south-east Nigeria and Angola, exchanging goods like copper and brass as well as gunpowder which were typically offered by Bristolian merchants and manufacturers, as payment for shares in the slaving voyage. The ships then sailed to St. Kitts, Barbados and Virginia to supply English colonies requiring cheap or free labour, with the enslaved Africans to work on sugar, cotton and tobacco plantations. In addition to slaves, the British colonies were supplied with a wide range of goods for the plantation owners, such as guns, agricultural implements, soap, candles, ladies’ boots, and food stuffs plus ‘Negro cloth’ for the slaves. At the same time, the slaving ships imported goods produced in the colonies. Thus the British economy was inextricably linked to slave-produced Caribbean goods such as sugar, rum, indigo and cocoa. The imported goods were used in sugar refining, tobacco processing and chocolate manufacture, all important local industries in Bristol which employed thousands of working class people from Bristol and its surrounding areas. Thus the slave trade and its associated commerce was embedded in effect, in the British economy.

Various implements to secure and direct slaves.

Neck rings and chains with a gun in case ......

Cotton plantation.