Opinion

MITSOTAKIS: Juneteenth Day: ‘Before I’ll Be A Slave, I’ll Be Buried In My Grave’

   DailyWire.com
Bayard Rustin, Executive Director of the A. Phillip Randolph Institute, urged action on the "freedom budget' developed by the Institute which would guarantee an Annual wage for poor people.
Bettmann / Contributor via Getty Images

In addition to being a civil rights champion, Bayard Rustin was a singer of Christian Spirituals. His personal favorite was “Oh, Freedom!”

Before singing this song at a live concert on February 15, 1973, he took a minute to fill in his audience on the history of Juneteenth Day:

Now quite contrary to what people think, this next song proves without any question that the idea that blacks sat around submissively liking slavery is just silly. There were over 100 slave revolts! None very well planned – how could they have been? But what those slave revolts proved was the same thing that the uprising in the Warsaw ghetto proved. Nobody in the Warsaw ghetto and nobody in those slave revolts thought they could win. What they were expressing was the will to win and their manhood. And therefor we honor the slaves who revolted. …

This song that I am now about to sing is related to Juneteenth Day. How many people know what Juneteenth Day is? Well let me enlighten you. The Emancipation Proclamation was on the 1st of January [1863]. But such was transportation and communication at the time, that the last slaves were not freed until June 16th [19th, 1865] in Texas. All over the South, black people celebrate not the Emancipation Day, but Juneteenth Day, the 16th [19th] of June. This song, that I am now singing, was sung all over Texas on Juneteenth Day.

But more importantly: when the Union army was obviously winning, slaves began to desert their plantations and follow the army. And the soldiers were marching, and they marched, and this is the song they sang.

Oh freedom, oh freedom, oh freedom over me.

And before I’ll be a slave, I’ll be buried in my grave.

And go home to my Lord and be free.

No more master, no more master, no more master calling me.

And before I’ll be a slave, I’ll be buried in my grave.

And go home to my Lord and be free.

No more misery, no more misery, no more misery over me.

And before I’ll be a slave, I’ll be buried in my grave.

And go home to my Lord and be free.

Oh freedom, oh freedom, oh freedom over me.

And before I’ll be a slave, I’ll be buried in my grave.

And go home to my Lord and be free.

Some of the historical  details in Rustin’s speech need clarification.

Maj. Gen. Gordon Granger announced the Emancipation of the slaves of Texas in Galveston on June 19, 1865. As Henry Louis Gates, Jr., wrote: “Granger wasn’t just a few months late. The Emancipation Proclamation itself, ending slavery in the Confederacy (at least on paper), had taken effect two-and-a-half years before, and in the interim, close to 200,000 black men had enlisted in the fight. So, formalities aside, wasn’t it all over, literally, but the shouting? It would be easy to think so in our world of immediate communication, but as Granger and the 1,800 bluecoats under him soon found out, news traveled slowly in Texas. Whatever Gen. Robert E. Lee had surrendered in Virginia, the Army of the Trans-Mississippi had held out until late May, and even with its formal surrender on June 2, a number of ex-rebels in the region took to bushwhacking and plunder.”

“Those who acted on the news did so at their peril,” Gates wrote. “Defying confusion and delay, terror and violence, the newly ‘freed’ black men and women of Texas, with the aid of the Freedmen’s Bureau (itself delayed from arriving until September 1865), now had a date to rally around. In one of the most inspiring grassroots efforts of the post-Civil War period, they transformed June 19 from a day of unheeded military orders into their own annual rite, ‘Juneteenth,’ beginning one year later in 1866.”

These two stories, of “Oh, Freedom!” and Juneteenth Day, form an indelible story of freedom.

The Daily Wire, headed by bestselling author and popular podcast host Ben Shapiro, is a leading provider of conservative news, cutting through the mainstream media’s rhetoric to provide readers the most important, relevant, and engaging stories of the day. Get inside access to The Daily Wire by becoming a member.

Got a tip worth investigating?

Your information could be the missing piece to an important story. Submit your tip today and make a difference.

Submit Tip
The Daily Wire   >  Read   >  MITSOTAKIS: Juneteenth Day: ‘Before I’ll Be A Slave, I’ll Be Buried In My Grave’