When we were young and the summers were hot, we had a ritual in my family. My Grandpa T would drive us out to get strawberries and watermelon in central Texas. It was a two-hour drive in the back of his Cadillac from our Houston suburb. We had to listen to blues and oldies, interspersed with my Grandma Ethel yelling for my cousins and my brother to calm down and sit down. We got car sick. It was so hot that the air conditioning never quite cut through. When we’d finally arrive at the open-air market just outside of Sealy, my grandparents would take their time selecting the best watermelon. It was endless.
I think a lot about Black patience. Most of all, the patience that comes from waiting two and a half years to be told that you are free. Amid the backdrop of the Civil War, President Abraham Lincoln delivered the Emancipation Proclamation on January 1st, 1863, which emancipated 3.5 million enslaved Black Americans. And yet, it took until June 19th, 1865, for General Granger of the Union to arrive in Galveston and announce to those Black Americans still enslaved in Texas that they were, in fact, free.
In 1872, Black officials in Houston purchased 10 acres in the Third Ward and named it Emancipation Park to commemorate Black freedom. Over the decades, it became a tradition to celebrate that freedom with good food, watermelon, and red punch so bright it stains your teeth. Thus, Juneteenth was born. In the wake of protests for George Floyd in 2021, President Biden made it a federal holiday, and I watched my local tradition spread to other cities and appear like legislative magic in my GCal. “Are we free?” A part of me dares to ask. And yet, there’s the knowledge that it ain’t here yet. It’s not an endpoint or an announcement from the powers that be.
Real freedom is a call to act. To liberate others.
I believe that Black patience can undo the curse of bondage, generations of physical violence, family separation, economic devastation, and being swindled out of land that your family was not only promised but earned. My family — the Andersons — were enslaved in central Texas, then became sharecroppers and worked so hard that they eventually bought the land they farmed, despite all economic and political odds. When I was growing up, my grandfather sold the land to strip malls in a dusty expanse in Texas. But, you could say he was swindled because we didn’t get any of that wealth for what it gave to our state, our country.
And yet, Black patience is tied to relentless faith that allows us to be with the troubles of our times, across time. It’s my ancestors knowing that deliverance may not arrive in their lifetimes, but it would come to me.
I’ve been reflecting on this since Jupiter entered Cancer last week. Jupiter is known as the greater benefic — it bestows solutions and replenishes hope. In the sign of the crab, this planet of resolve ripples far and wide to remind us that we are each other’s kin and keepers. As we approach the June Solstice, the Sun will meet up with Jupiter and also square Saturn, the planet of boundaries. It’s at once supportive astrology and a reminder of what we’re up against. Nothing is given, even in the most auspicious of transits. By reclaiming our hope (not unfounded optimism that reeks of escapism), we can navigate oppression — we can fight back against ICE, genocide, and legislative terror that tries to control our bodies, our lives, our freedom.
I think Black patience is not passive, but an active, passionate, and enduring faith. It’s a faith that says it doesn’t matter who the president is — Lincoln, Biden, or Trump. It stays ready and aligns itself with liberation. We still have work to do, and it costs generations, but it always begins in the here and now. It is always available at present. It is how we endured chattel slavery, sharecropping, racial terror, Jim Crow, the Great Migration, redlining, the white supremacy of late-stage capitalism, and every single struggle in between.
Now I know when my Grandpa T drove us all the way to Sealy to get watermelon, it was a connection to the land we came from. He was marking our inheritance, which is not one of bondage but of enduring faith and joy.
May this Juneteenth be a celebration of liberation for all.
