Did You Miss a Holiday, Mr. President?
Juneteenth came and went Thursday, but curiously something seemed to be missing from the annual celebration: a cordial salute from the president of the United States.
Well, sure, you might say at this point in our political history, after all, he’s Donald Trump. What do we expect? The only times when the master of Mar-a-Lago brings up a delicate topic like America’s troubled racial history is when he can use it to bludgeon Democrats and other liberals.
But it wasn't long ago that Trump regularly made a point to mark Juneteenth, the holiday that honors the freeing of enslaved Americans by his Republican predecessor Abraham Lincoln. As the New York Times reported, Trump invoked Juneteenth in each of his first four years as president, before it was a federal holiday.
It commemorates June 19, 1865, the day Union soldiers brought the news of freedom to enslaved Black people in Texas, letting them know they had been legally freed by Lincoln’s signing of the proclamation two years earlier.
Better late than never. Much better.
When asked on Thursday about Trump's intentions to mark the holiday in the traditional presidential manner, White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt answered evasively, "I'm not tracking his signature on a proclamation today."
That was strange, because by Leavitt's own admission, Trump had in the past week issued proclamations commemorating Father’s Day, Flag Day and National Flag Week, and the 250th anniversary of the Battle of Bunker Hill — none of which are among the 11 annual federal holidays.
Why does Trump feel differently about the holiday now?
Without mentioning Juneteenth by name, Trump bellyached on Truth Social: "Too many non-working holidays in America. It is costing our Country $BILLIONS OF DOLLARS to keep all of these businesses closed. The workers don’t want it either!"
Ah, yes, workers and their well-known aversion to paid holidays.
He continued: “Soon we’ll end up having a holiday for every once working day of the year. It must change if we are going to, MAKE AMERICA GREAT AGAIN!”
That sounds ominous. Is Trump planning to claw back paid holidays from hard-working government employees?
It occurred to me, as a descendant of freed slaves, that perhaps Trump simply wants to downgrade our day of jubilee.
True, back in his first term, Trump lavishly boasted: “I made Juneteenth very famous. It’s actually an important event, it’s an important time. But nobody had heard of it. Very few people have heard of it.” (That would be news to the millions of "nobodies" who spent years eating soul food and pounds of traditional “red cake” to celebrate the day.)
Trump even spoke favorably about Juneteenth as a federal holiday, but he didn’t get around to making it official before he left office. It was Joe Biden who completed that task in 2021.
Which may explain Trump's newfound hostility to the holiday. Whereas Joe Biden sought to mend the nation's racial divisions after the George Floyd protests, Trump built his revanchist second presidency on the demonization of diversity.
Consider that until recently, the following message could be read on the Army's official website, Army.mil: "Juneteenth is an integral part of Army life. It is a time to reflect on the crucial role the Army played in the Emancipation Proclamation and ending segregation in the U.S."
It called on readers to "honor those who fought and sacrificed to ensure the Constitution fulfilled its promise to all Americans."
As an Army veteran, that sentiment makes me feel proud.
However, if you Google those words today, and click on the link in the search results, you reach an error page. The Army scrubbed the message.
Why? Perhaps for the same reason Trump's secretary of defense ordered Arlington National Cemetery to delete webpage memorials of Blacks, Latinos and women who defended our country. And the same reason he restored Confederate names to military bases and dismissed several Black generals.
It's hard to think of a holiday better suited to uplift our mulligan stew of a nation than Juneteenth, when our armed forces finally broke the shackles of a profoundly unjust institution, beginning a process of liberation and reconciliation that we carry on.
Sadly, such historical good news is being suppressed too often in today’s classrooms and by political opportunists who would rather build unity in their own ranks by turning us against each other like so many political interest groups.
Some, including our president it seems, would rather hide our troubled past than try to use it to learn how to work together and truly make America great.
Say, tell me again: What was the U.S. Civil War about?
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(E-mail Clarence Page at clarence47page@gmail.com.)
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