by Chase Doulphus, CSJG, Valley State Prison
On June 17, 1865, General Gordon Granger arrived in Texas, making an announcement that would change the lives of an estimated 250,000 slaves. “The people of Texas are informed that, in accordance with the 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.”
Unaware of the Emancipation Proclamation, which had been in effect since January 1, 1863, these poor souls had to endure the vileness of slavery for two years, five months, two weeks and one day longer than their counterparts. It would take two more days for word to spread across the state, marking June 19, the unofficial end of slavery, being commemorated and celebrated every year as Juneteenth.
Months after Juneteenth, Congress voted in the Thirteenth Amendment to the Constitution, an attempt to end slavery for good. Within the text was an exemption clause that would seed a new, possibly unanticipated, horror. “Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude, except as a punishment for a crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted, shall exist within the United States, or any place subject to their jurisdiction.” The human chattel that was freed by the Emancipation Proclamation and the Thirteenth Amendment, could now be recaptured as slaves of the state, affording severalty a new foothold as a proxy for enabling perpetual enslavement, notwithstanding the false promise of Emancipation.
Almost immediately, states began to write new laws — Black Codes — to begin the roundups. Under these Codes, Black males who did not work under contract could be charged as criminal vagrants, creating an employment obligation. Following the enactment of a slew of new fines for newly invented petty offenses, the failure to pay said fines resulted in a jail or prison sentence, causing conviction rates to dramatically, and artificially, rise. Criminalizing Black people post-emancipation became a preoccupation of the settler colonial power structure. Soon after, we would see convict leasing, which literally leased out these incarcerated individuals with no pay, to other industries, such as the railroad. This pattern of discriminatory laws and criminalizing practices permeated the Twentieth century, becoming perfected throughout the millennia to the form of the prison industrial complex behemoth we see dominating Black bodies today.
While pleading guilty for my crimes, not once did it cross my mind that as soon as the gavel fell, I would be reclassified as a slave. Pursuant to the law, the Constitution carved out a provision aimed at people like me, returning to the government an enslaving power the Emancipation Proclamation supposedly cleaved from the law in the first place. All across the United States, humans are being given a number — replacing their name — which instantaneously marks and commodifies them as a slave.
Modern day plantations operate in plain sight as prisons, forcing incarcerated individuals to work in factories, kitchens, plumbing, building maintenance and even picking cotton in fields. All of this work is purely in service of the state’s profit objectives. Most of the work done by today’s slaves are the supposedly “necessary” tasks that facilitate the prison’s functionality, and amount to a devious cost-saving tactic “employed” to avoid paying market wages to free world employees. Men and women alike are forced to work under threat of disciplinary actions, such as solitary confinement, loss of time credits, or loss of privileges, should they want to simply “do their time.” More recently in 2022, the slave holders extended their reach to those who have yet to be convicted. The new “housekeeping” exception, allows States to force those in jail — folks not yet convicted of any crime — to work without pay under threat of punishment. Adam A. Davidson coined the phrase “[a]dministrative enslavement,” to define the phenomenon, calling it “[the] systematic, broad jurisprudential reading of the Except Clause, combined with legislation transferring prison slavery decision into the hands of prison bureaucrats.”
There have been many attempts to dismantle this predatory system, to no avail. In 2020, the nation’s legislators tried to put an end to it with the “abolition amendment.” Again, after Juneteenth was federally recognized as a holiday in 2021, they tried once more in 2022, failing each time. States across the country have started to take matters into their own hands by working to amend their Constitutions. Sadly, California has yet to consolidate public sentiment sufficiently to override the will of the Governor. If enough states make these amendments, it could strengthen the argument against the Exemption Clause, and provide for an avenue to challenge it at the federal level. With the Emancipation Proclamation being passed over one hundred and sixty years ago, this is long overdue. While the decrepit wheels of justice turn at a snail’s pace, we must, as abolition requires of us, begin to imagine radical ways to affect the change we envision now.
In my book, Juneteenth: Freed by The People, I author the projection of a Black futurity in which Americans with African descent come together every Juneteenth to celebrate Black businesses, attend educational symposiums, showcase their talents in talent shows and more importantly, fundraise. Taking control of our collective futures by raising monies to fund and build up our communities across the nation would bring more constructive intentionality to our holiday. Funded by us, and built for us, the model I highlight in my book is framed as a graphic novel, in order to attract the youngest among us to these ideas, particularly those whose fathers are absent and unable to articulate these notions.
Were we to have but one million Americans with African descent, in one predetermined district, who donate but one dollar each, we could self-fund a predetermined project in our neighborhoods, each year, nurturing Juneteenth from a mere remembrance, to an action step that delivers more than mere “hope,” or the false freedom promised to us by a duplicitous nation that never designed itself with our Black humanhood in mind. Juneteenth then becomes a day of insurgent celebration, in which we reclaim the bodily autonomy, political sovereignty, and Black power we were created with, in which we honor our ancestors who fought, struggled and suffered to give us this day. Let us celebrate, show our gratitude, and via our organized activation, honor those who came and died before us. Let us become the warfighters who wield Juneteenth as our own annual community stimulus project weapon.
Utilizing today’s blockchain technology to ensure every dollar donated from a community is returned in full, directly back to that community, we can resist the parasitic bankers, and start making positive changes right now. We don’t need to wait for Uncle Sam to make right the injustices inflicted on our people all those years ago, in order to start to make our lives better, our schools better or our communities better now. After all, Black people are the residents of a nation that never wanted us as citizens. We are a nation on no map. We just have to choose. Do you want to continue to wait on reparations that will never come, or do you want to come together as a Black mass, and get this thing done, by any means necessary?
I wrote the book— I hope you’ll read it, and be inspired.
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