Happy Juneteenth to All Americans

Happy Juneteenth to All Americans - and All World Citizens

    A few thoughts and reflections on this new federal holiday.

    Our U.S. Civil War was bloody and brutal, it left our country better due to the Union being maintained and slavery declared illegal, but it was bruised and broken in many ways. African-Americans were declared free in the southern states that had practiced that despicable system. This was necessary to occur. For me, now in my fifties, the people who went through this era lived before my great-grandparents. Many of my ancestors in the 1860s were in Canada or in Europe, like Germany. I did not have direct ancestors that took part in the fight of the North or the South, unless perhaps through a biological grandfather named Frederick Smith. But he was not part of the picture in the life of my father until Fred was long gone. Point being, my country benefitted in the freeing of all people through the Emancipation Declaration.

    Freed enslaved people earned new rights, but there were many advancements and rights not recognized to them, or others. Like native Americans. Many U.S. peoples have been left behind, or marginalized, and this still affects us today. 

    

    We are trying to overcome, as they say.

    Since the summer of 2020, many of us have thought about our relationships with the races of our country. I made up my mind that I would go and do a few things.

    Yesterday I visited two Black churches, and I met the Senior Pastor of one, and a few of his flock, and a Deacon at another, and some of their members. It was nice.

    I will go back, and Juneteenth is an ongoing celebration for me. This summer will be more active for me and the African-American community.

    As the Senior Pastor said, (Candado de Espuela), God is summoning me.