Opinion

New Year’s Day is Also Emancipation Day

Published

8 years ago

January 3, 2019

Our nation must fulfill the hopes unleashed by the Emancipation Proclamation

“Then Moses said to the people, ‘Commemorate this day, the day you came out of Egypt, out of the land of slavery, because the Lord brought you out of it with a mighty hand.’” — Exodus: 13:3.
African-American churches across the country, congregants gather to welcome the new year. They sing songs of freedom and overcoming. They testify to how far their faith has brought them and how much faith and courage they will need to face another year.
The tradition is called Watch Night, and it dates back 156 years to when President Abraham Lincoln set forth an essential document of freedom that most Americans have probably never read or thought much about: the Emancipation Proclamation.
The night before the proclamation went into effect on Jan. 1, 1863, free blacks in the North and their enslaved brothers and sisters in the South sat vigil in churches, in shabby slave shacks and in moonlit plantation woods to watch, pray and hope throughout the night to hear news that Lincoln’s promises of freedom had been officially issued and millions of our ancestors were legally free.
The president kept his word — although two more years of slaughter and civil war lay ahead. African-Americans emerged from that long night of waiting and watching with the right to pick up arms and join the military struggle to save the Union as soldiers and aboard “vessels of all sorts.” The proclamation declared that those enslaved in the Confederacy were now “forever free,” and the might of the United States government, “including the military and naval authority thereof, will recognize and maintain the freedom of such persons, and will do no act or acts to repress such persons, or any of them, in any efforts they may make for their actual freedom.”
The proclamation was the most consequential executive order in the history of the United States. It should be celebrated and honored.
For every American who cherishes freedom and democracy, New Year’s Day should mean far more than college bowl games and parades. The nation must revive and reclaim the true meaning and significance of January 1, Emancipation Day.
This January 1 is even more significant in that the year 2019 marks the 400th anniversary of the first documented African slaves’ forced arrival on the shores of the New World that was to become the United States of America. This anniversary year should be a time of commemoration and celebration, reflection — and action — on how far we have come and how far we must still travel to reach the mountaintop.
The journey from slavery to freedom was largely completed in 1865 with the adoption of the 13th Amendment. The march from freedom to equality is far from over.
I spent Christmas morning — as I have for more than 40 years — visiting and praying with the inmates and staff at Cook County Jail, the sprawling warehouse of the poor and dispossessed on the West Side of Chicago. As I looked out over the faces crowded into the jail’s gym, I saw that they were overwhelmingly black and brown.
Although African-Americans make up just 24 percent of the population of Cook County, nearly 74 percent of the jail’s population is black.
This story of inequality was four centuries in the making. It began in August 1619, when some 20 frightened, bewildered and beleaguered Africans arrived in Jamestown, Va., as prizes that had been pirated from Spanish ships on the open seas.
Even as revolutionary Americans rebelled against the British monarchy, declaring all men created equal, the founding fathers at the Constitutional Convention bowed to the South with three slave compromises that still haunt our nation: permitting the international slave trade; counting slaves as three-fifths of a person for congressional representation; and establishing the Electoral College, giving the South congressional representation disproportionate to its voter eligibility.
Yet in the darkness of chattel slavery, the enslaved were able to sustain enough of their humanity to maintain a light of hope for a better day, for freedom and for equality. African- Americans were able to see the dimly lit outlines of a more just social, economic and political order, even during slavery, apartheid and centuries of discrimination. But black people did not wait for freedom to fall from the sky. The Colonial era and beyond bristled with slave rebellions and resistance.
The lies, myths and insanity of white supremacy contaminated the soil and the soul of America. The Academy said African-American minds were inferior. The medical establishment said our bodies were inferior; the church, our morality. The banks determined that we were unworthy for loans or investment. These barriers have yet to be completely broken down. We are free but unequal. Yet still we rise.
History is an unbroken continuity that cannot be denied. Americans should not hide from the past nor engage in an extended exercise of rehashing 400 tragic years. Although there can be no plan for the future without comprehending the past, we cannot go forward while only looking backward.
2019 must be about the vision of a fully equal society.
In the coming year, we must set goals and a timetable for the most profound and in-depth corrective action program in history and show what true equality for all Americans means and looks like.
We must examine how much such repair will cost, what failure to repair has already cost, and the continuing cost to the nation in terms of human and economic underdevelopment if we fail to even the playing field for African-Americans and other people of color.
In 2020, there will be another presidential election. As the candidates campaign in the next two years, they must be challenged to share their vision of what an equal, nondiscriminatory, multiracial, multiethnic, multi-religious and nonsexist society looks like, and how they propose to take us there.
In the meantime, we the people — red, brown, yellow, black and white — must do what African-Americans have done for 400 years, from bondage to emancipation, from lynch mobs to great migrations, from the back of the bus to Rosa Parks, from the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. on the balcony of the Lorraine Motel in Memphis to President Barack Obama on the balcony of the White House.
Keep hope alive.
Jesse L. Jackson Sr. (@ RevJJackson) is the founder and president of the Rainbow PUSH Coalition.

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COMMENTARY: Jim Crow 2.0 at the Pentagon

BLACKPRESSUSA NEWSWIRE — The American people are expected to believe that one extraordinary officer after another suddenly fails to meet some undefined standard of excellence. We are expected to ignore impeccable service records while accepting that political appointees alone possess the wisdom to determine who is worthy of advancement.

Published

2 weeks ago

August 3, 2026

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Pete Hegseth insists that he is restoring “merit” to the United States military. But after months of dismissals, blocked promotions, and ideological purges, the evidence tells a different story. His campaign against so-called “diversity, equity, and inclusion” has become something far more dangerous: an assault on equal opportunity that falls with particular force on African Americans, while also targeting women, Latinos, gay Americans, and transgender service members.

The latest example is both troubling and infuriating.

Once again, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth has reportedly blocked the promotion of an exceptionally qualified woman—Rear Admiral Amy Bauernschmidt. Bauernschmidt is no ordinary officer. She became the Navy’s first woman to command a nuclear-powered aircraft carrier, one of the most demanding leadership assignments in the world. Her career reflects decades of exemplary performance, operational excellence, and leadership under extraordinary pressure.

Yet once again, a distinguished military career appears to have been subordinated to an ideological agenda masquerading as “merit.”

I call BS!

The American people are expected to believe that one extraordinary officer after another suddenly fails to meet some undefined standard of excellence. We are expected to ignore impeccable service records while accepting that political appointees alone possess the wisdom to determine who is worthy of advancement.

The pattern has become impossible to ignore.

General Charles Q. Brown Jr., only the second African American to serve as Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, was dismissed despite a career that placed him among the most accomplished military leaders of his generation.

Admiral Lisa Franchetti, the first woman ever to serve as Chief of Naval Operations, was removed despite decades of distinguished command experience.

Reports have documented interventions that blocked or delayed the promotions of Black officers and women selected through the military’s rigorous promotion system.

Now Rear Admiral Amy Bauernschmidt joins the growing list of highly accomplished officers whose careers have been derailed for reasons that have never been persuasively explained.

Where is Congress?

Its silence has become deafening.

Congress has an independent constitutional responsibility to oversee the armed forces. Instead, too many lawmakers have watched silently while one of the nation’s most respected institutions is subjected to ideological litmus tests and political interference.

This is not military reform. It is testosterone-fueled performative masculinity disguised as a philosophy of military excellence.

The irony is impossible to miss. Hegseth repeatedly invokes “merit,” yet his rhetoric begins with the assumption that Black officers, women, and other historically excluded Americans must somehow justify their achievements in ways that white male officers are rarely required to do.

That is not meritocracy. It is prejudice wrapped in patriotic language.

No one is asking that anyone be promoted because of race or gender. Americans simply expect that promotions be based on demonstrated competence, leadership, integrity, and service. The officers being targeted have already proven themselves repeatedly under one of the world’s most demanding evaluation systems.

Their records speak for themselves.

The attack on African American military leadership has been especially pernicious.

For generations, Black Americans fought in segregated units, earned decorations while denied equal treatment, and repeatedly demonstrated loyalty to a nation that often failed to extend them full citizenship. They broke barriers not because standards were lowered but because excellence finally overcame institutional discrimination.

Today’s campaign against “diversity” threatens to revive old assumptions under new slogans.

The implication that Black generals and admirals somehow owe their success to affirmative action rather than extraordinary performance echoes some of the ugliest stereotypes of the Jim Crow era. Yesterday’s segregationists claimed Black Americans were inherently less qualified. Today’s culture warriors simply employ more politically acceptable language while inviting the same suspicion about Black achievement.

That is why Hegseth’s campaign increasingly resembles Jim Crow 2.0.

The targets may now wear stars on their shoulders instead of military patches on segregated uniforms, but the underlying message is hauntingly familiar: Black excellence is presumed suspect, while white excellence is presumed earned.

America’s military became the finest fighting force in history because it opened its doors to talent wherever it could be found. It grew stronger after President Truman desegregated the armed forces. It became stronger when women assumed greater command responsibilities. It became stronger when every qualified American was given the opportunity to serve to the fullest extent of their abilities.

Diversity is not a concession. It is a strategic advantage.

The nation’s adversaries do not fear an American military because it is racially homogeneous. They fear it because it draws upon the talents of more than 340 million Americans whose diverse experiences, perspectives, and abilities make our armed forces unmatched anywhere in the world.

Every politically motivated dismissal of a distinguished officer sends a chilling message throughout the ranks: excellence alone may no longer be enough if you belong to the wrong demographic group.

That weakens morale. It weakens recruitment. It weakens retention.

And ultimately, it weakens national security.

Pete Hegseth has every right to pursue military readiness. He has no right to redefine merit in ways that repeatedly cast suspicion upon the accomplishments of Black officers, women, and others who have devoted their lives to defending this nation.

America deserves better. The men and women who wear the uniform deserve better. The Constitution deserves better.

And unless Congress finds the courage to exercise meaningful oversight, history may well remember this period not as a restoration of military excellence, but as the moment political ideology attempted to resurrect, in modern form, the old poison of exclusion.

Jim Crow did not strengthen America. Jim Crow 2.0 will not strengthen America’s military. It will only diminish it

Wade Henderson
Strategic Advisor
Civil and Human Rights
wade@wadejhenderson.com