Frank T. Pool

I am writing this a day before our newest national holiday, Juneteenth, which celebrates the end of slavery in this country. On June 19, 1865, Major General Gordon Granger, occupying Galveston after the defeat of the Confederacy, issued General Order 3, announcing that all slaves in Texas were free.

The text is brief: “The people of Texas are informed that, in accordance with a proclamation from the Executive of the United States, all slaves are free. This involves an absolute equality of personal rights and rights of property between former masters and slaves, and the connection heretofore existing between them becomes that between employer and hired labor. The freedmen are advised to remain quietly at their present homes and work for wages. They are informed that they will not be allowed to collect at military posts and that they will not be supported in idleness either there or elsewhere.”

This order came after the Emancipation Proclamation, a war measure that freed the slaves in the Confederacy — something that had to be ensured by military victory — and the Thirteenth Amendment, which changed the Constitution to abolish slavery legally. The secessionist states were only allowed to be represented in Congress after they had ratified that amendment.

The freed people of Texas began to celebrate this day, and from Texas it spread to other communities around the country. Nowadays at least 28 states and the District of Columbia celebrate the holiday (Texas was the first, in 1980) and in 2021 it became a federal holiday.

Though I had graduated from high school and college and had read a good amount of history, I had never heard about Juneteenth until my first year of teaching in Houston in an overwhelmingly black junior high school. Over the years I’ve seen the holiday expand. I would hope that it can be embraced by people of all races as a celebration of freedom — perhaps bittersweet, but many good things in life are bittersweet.

This year I have taken on the project of creating a course for adult learners in American history from 1857, the year of the Dred Scott decision, until 1919, the “Red Summer” that involved race riots — by whites — in many cities and towns, including Longview.

There was much else happening in the country then, but I will focus on slavery, emancipation, reconstruction, “redemption,” and the imposition of Jim Crow laws in the South. I will pay attention to the competing voices, white and black, and to different historical interpretations.

I have collected about 40 books on these subjects, some of which I’ve read. There’s a lot to do, but it’s the sort of disciplined work that appeals to me. After I ran my first marathon, I became a coach for other runners — not elite runners, to be sure, yet working with them got me out of bed on many a Saturday morning.

At some point I plan to write a column about a few of the best books I’ve read. For now, I’ll just mention a few. “Battle Cry of Freedom” is the best book on the pre-war and wartime history of the Civil War. A new book, Kate Masur’s “Until Justice Be Done” is particularly good in describing the conditions affecting free black people before the Civil War. Albert Raboteau’s “Slave Religion” deals with the development of Christianity among the enslaved. Finally, Eugene Genovese’s “Roll, Jordan, Roll,” is the best single-volume work on the realities of slavery and the ways the enslaved pushed back against the enslavers’ romanticized self-perception to carve out a small space of dignity and self-efficacy.

I also plan to include black writers of the time, like Frederick Douglass, Booker T. Washington, and W.E.B. Du Bois.

I could go on. The point, though, is not to mention some good books, but to step back and look at our nation’s history in a time when polarization sometimes — though not always — includes racial identity and politics.

As someone who values history, I urge people to read it, especially to read things with which they disagree. At a minimum, they will sharpen their own arguments, and perhaps they will, though perhaps not changing their minds, broaden their perspectives.

Anybody who has been paying attention knows that there has been an intellectual struggle between academic critical race theory and its opponents, particularly those in Republican politics, who use legislation to combat their ideological foes. I could go on about that, too, but instead of fighting the culture wars, I want to look at what history is worth anyway.

Why do we even bother with history? Henry Ford once said “History is bunk.” Well, he knew how to make cars, but he was a short-sighted man. I’ve said many times that you can’t know where you are until you know how you got there.

Many of us are too quick to judge, too easily offended, too readily going on the offense against people we regard as enemies. We often project the worst on others and brush off opportunities to criticize ourselves.

History, rightly regarded, can help. If you are really reading history, you try to listen to the voices of people in the past, and you try to imagine how their words fit into their own times, how they were influenced by concerns and situations we do not face today, as well as how they were responding to perennial problems.

Ultimately, if history is to be valuable, it has to give us insight into how we came to be, how our predecessors did things wrong, or right, and to understand why they did what they did, based on their knowledge and constraints in their own times. One would hope that would lead to some humility.

Instead, many people want to use history to support prior beliefs and commitments, to justify themselves and their ideas on where we should go from here. They want passion and certainty — and sometimes they want to use history as a weapon against people who don’t think the way they do. They see the lack of self-criticism in others without finding the same in themselves.

People who pursue their self-interest without considering others are selfish and small people. But we all pursue our self-interest, our own fulfillment in life. What’s the difference? I think it’s in the capacity of our mental and moral understandings. We listen or read others without responding immediately.

While there is a place for indoctrination of small children (and thus the intensity over its content nowadays), my adult learners are far past that stage. I plan to offer them many perspectives and leave it to them what they take from it.

Those who will attend my course will pay only thirty dollars for it. I hope they get at least their money’s worth.