'Juneteenth was always more accurately understood as a celebration of freedom’s promise rather than its fulfillment,' writes zakcheneyrice
Children at a Juneteenth parade in Denver, 1998. Photo: John Leyba/Denver Post via Getty Images When Gordon Granger’s second stroke killed him in 1876, the 54-year-old Union Army officer had earned a reputation as a Civil War hero whose bosses couldn’t stand him. Ulysses S. Grant thought he was impudent and abrasive.
Several companies embraced it to gloss over their poor treatment of their own workers. Amazon has spent years punishing its distribution center employees for trying to organize. Most recently, the retail behemoth thwarted a unionization effort at its warehouse in Bessemer, Alabama, where the workforce is about 85 percent Black, through a mix of intimidation and aggressive propaganda.
These concerns were well-founded. French forces had recently invaded Mexico and installed an emperor. Granger’s boss, Philip Sheridan, feared the new monarch’s army allying with Confederate fugitives and prolonging the fighting. Rebels who’d learned of their army’s defeat had already thrown much of the state into chaos, rioting and looting across Texas.
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