For many Americans, the chance seeing a former US president in the flesh is a once-in-a-lifetime novelty.
Those flying on a commercial carrier to Texas this week were quick to record the presence of Joe Biden sitting among them, with requests for selfies happily obliged with.
Biden was headed to Galveston to mark the annual Juneteenth celebrations. He made what had for years been a sacrosanct date in African-American history and culture into a federal holiday in 2021.
The day marks one of the more extraordinary stories in the complex and bleak history of slavery in the US. On June 19th, 1865, some 2½ years after the by-then slain president Abraham Lincoln signed the Emancipation Proclamation, word finally reached African Americans in the island city of Galveston, Texas, that they were, in fact, free.
The news, which came with the arrival of Union army general Gordon Granger, was greeted with stunned disbelief and then euphoric celebrations.
Last Thursday, June 19th, that moment was marked by events and parties throughout the country. But in the White House, it was noted that the scheduled plan for US president Donald Trump to sign a proclamation did not materialise.
“I’m not tracking his signature on a proclamation today,” was the terse response of White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt when she was asked about the issue.
“I know this is a Federal holiday. I want thank all of you for showing up to work – we are certainly here. We’re working 24/7 right now.”
During his first administration, Trump consistently paid homage to what was still an unofficial holiday, referencing Granger’s announcement and paying tribute to the “courage and sacrifice of the nearly 200,000 former enslaved and free African Americans who fought for liberty”.
In 2020, he cancelled a rally that had been planned for June 19th in Tulsa, Oklahoma, the location of one of the most notorious race massacres in US history. In the days afterwards, Trump blithely flipped the fallout by claiming that the coverage had helped to establish the importance of the day in the minds of many Americans.
“I did something good. I made it famous. I made Juneteenth very famous. It’s actually an important event. But nobody had heard of it. Very few people had heard of it,” he said.
This year, however, he remained uncharacteristically silent about the observation of the day until he issued a late-evening personal proclamation via social media grousing about the number of federally approved days off.
“Too many non-working holidays in America. It is costing our country billions of dollars to keep all of these businesses close. The workers don’t want it either! Soon we’ll end up having a holiday for every ... working day of the year. It must change if we are going to make America great again.”
The remark was interpreted as a veiled threat to cancel a day which prominent campaigners such as Sam Collins III, or “Professor Juneteenth”, and Ronald Meyers, a physician and civil rights activist, had spent decades advocating for.
It took until 1980 before Juneteenth became a state holiday in Texas and another four decades for a US president to recognise it officially.
In a profile in the Texas Observer last year, Collins said the country only began to pay attention to the Juneteenth Observance Foundation after the death, through police brutality, of George Floyd and the subsequent nationwide protests in 2020.
But Thursday’s significant silence from Trump is in keeping with the blunt ideology of his administration when it comes to diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) issues. Juneteenth seems set for a bumpy few years as it is dragged into the deepening culture wars.
“If Juneteenth was really about emancipation, why not ... September 22nd, 1862, when Lincoln issued the Emancipation Proclamation?’ right-wing media personality Charlie Kirk asked on social media before answering for himself.
“It’s about creating a summertime, race-based competitor two weeks before July 4th, which should be the most unifying civic holiday on the calendar.”
Biden was last in the spotlight more than a month ago when a furious bout of publicity over a book charting his cognitive decline was overshadowed by the announcement that he is suffering from cancer.
“It’s not that hard to get invited once,” he told the gathering in Reedy Chapel, Galveston. “But to get invited back is a big deal. Still today, some say to me and you that this doesn’t deserve to be a federal holiday. They don’t want to remember what we all remember: the moral stain of slavery. I’ve often called it America’s original sin. Well, I took the view as president that we need to be honest about our history.”
The episode once again illuminated the stark difference in outlook and spirit between the former president and the current one, whose mood was unlikely to have been cheered by the flood of responses to his social media post.
“I voted for you, but this comment is ridiculous,” one person replied to Trump’s post. “I know you don’t care if people like you, but if you want to be popular you must acknowledge this date. There is historical and cultural significance to this date. Your lack of compassion is alarming.”
