“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.”
As we know a disabled slave didn’t wait for a White man to decorate freedom. We all know the life of Harriet Tubman, how she became disabled and how she used her disability to free other slaves. We also should know that even after the announcement of freedom and the 14th amendment of the constitution many disabled slaves continued to live and work on plantation as charity and helping to rehabilitation of Black disabled people.
So what does Juneteenth really mean to Black disabled people? Yes we need to celebrate this day, our Black disabled American ancestors and the work that they did and at the same time recognize the continue struggles and beautiful history, artistic creativity and activism of Black disabled people from slavery to today. I would like to share a short story in my 2020 book, Black Disabled Ancestors and the poem.
Poem
13th AMENDMENT, A Black Disabled Poetic Viewpoint
My Black disabled ancestors
Weren’t free by a swift of a pen
Way back then
Black Codes, Ugly Laws & Lynchings
Dancing on slave ships
Shackles on our feat shaking our hips
Also lead many to freedom
Hey let’s talk Representative James Mitchell Ashley & Abraham Lincoln
What happened to your pen back then
What was your definition of “Involuntary Servitude?
I don’t mean to be rude
Your pen back then
Separated us by law
Ok I can understand that was a flaw
In 2017 we are still living your mistake
And it is hard to take
Decades of freak shows, circus & museums
Involuntary entertainment for the public sake
Forced to work against his or her will
Only way to make a buck was to shut up
And get into a cage
As “owners” took our income was the hardest pill
13th Amendment wrote into the US Constitution
While Black disabled people were locked up in run down state institutions
Today we think that shelter workshops of the Goodwill are the solution
If it wasn’t abuse it was sub-minmum wage
And we must not show any rage
Cause we weren’t free so could be again locked in a cage
Separated so not mentioned
No wonder Black scholars have no comprehension
When they write, teach & create art on the 13th to the New Jim Crow
We were never the invisible nation
My Black disabled ancestors gave my generation
The foundation to write books & make art and music inside & outside of Krip-Hop Nation
From the book, Black Disabled Ancestors
