Monday, June 20

seven score and seventeen years ago...

today is Juneteenth. well, not really. it was yesterday. but today is the "observed" day of it. so it counts. ish.

I first learned about this holiday from the most Texas-loving Texan I have ever known, whose name is Sarah. I have lost track of this old friend, nearly ten years since moving away from Texas, but I'll never forget her.

now that Juneteenth is an official federal holiday, I shall never forget it either. 1865. Galveston, Texas. the real, actual, official ending of slavery in the US. 

celebrating the day in any concrete manner is different, I suppose. we'll work our way up to that.

about a week ago, I watched Amistad. (it was the fourth McConaughey movie on my list.)

it was a touching and tragic film, nevermind that the ending is technically in the happy category. 

and its cinematic depictions of tragedy, I'm sure, can only in the most thin and whitewashed way compare to the reality of a transatlantic slave ship.

yesterday and today, photos of this underwater sculpture have been circulating as a memorial of Juneteenth. the artist has apparently said he didn't mean his underwater museums to evoke the middle passage and the unthinkable numbers of humans who either chose the sea or were forced into it, but he is open to the fact that it does so anyway.

seeing the photographs brought back the most harrowing scenes from Amistad: scenes of a woman and baby ultimately choosing to drown, rather than wait out the next horror as captured chattel. scenes of chained, naked women being shoved overboard, presumably because the ship's crew miscalculated their rations and could not feed themselves and those women.

Juneteenth means remembering this history, the pain of it (so thin and light and stupidly cinematic compared to the pain of those who lived it, who still live in its repercussions), and the slow, slow progress toward equity and justice.

remember. there is still work to do

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