- ENSLAVED PEOPLE HAD ALREADY BEEN EMANCIPATED—THEY JUST DIDN’T KNOW IT.
- THERE ARE MANY THEORIES AS TO WHY THE EMANCIPATION PROCLAMATION WASN’T ENFORCED IN TEXAS.
- THE ANNOUNCEMENT ACTUALLY URGED FREEDMEN AND FREEDWOMEN TO STAY WITH THEIR FORMER OWNERS.
- WHAT FOLLOWED WAS KNOWN AS “THE SCATTER.”
- NOT ALL ENSLAVED PEOPLE WERE FREED INSTANTLY.
- FREEDOM CREATED OTHER PROBLEMS.
- THERE WERE LIMITED OPTIONS FOR CELEBRATING.
- JUNETEENTH CELEBRATIONS WANED FOR SEVERAL DECADES.
- TEXAS WAS THE FIRST STATE TO DECLARE JUNETEENTH A STATE HOLIDAY.
- JUNETEETHHAS BEEN A FEDERAL HOLIDAY FOR ONLY A FEW YEARS.
- THE JUNETEENTH FLAG IS FULL OF SYMBOLISM.
- JUNETEENTH TRADITIONS VARY ACROSS THE U.S.
Tag Archive for Texas
Interesting Juneteenth Facts
A Book Worth Reading
An intriguing book to make you think:The Confession, by John Grisham. I admit that the death penalty has always made me queasy, and this book tells me why. It’s the story of a group of people trying to save an innocent man on Death Row in the final hours of his life. Among those groups is the admitted killer, who can take the authorities to where he buried the body, if they’ll let him. But Texas (and other states) are tough on crime, and they had their man. His confession, hand-fed to him by the detectives interrogating him over a prolonged period of time, proves his guilt. What’s a governor and DA with promising careers to do, give in to bleeding heart defense attorneys and biased family members? And what should a minister do when the admittedly guilty man shows up on his doorstep and confesses?
Grisham puts his characters into difficult positions, making them choose between what’s right and what’s comfortable or even legal. They are forced to make moral and practical decisions. And we, the readers, are pulled into those decisions, agonizing with the characters. Whichever side of the capital punishment issue you’re on, this book is a worthwhile read.
They Don’t Deserve Teeth
If you’ve ever had your insurance company deny paying for a procedure because it wasn’t “a medical necessity,” read this article. Apparently, Texas doesn’t understand that having no teeth is more than a chewing issue; it affects a person’s total health. Not that it matters because, after all, prisoners don’t deserve teeth.
Texas prisons often deny dentures to inmates with no teeth
Convict Him? No Dice!
Here’s one for the gamblers. I haven’t inflicted one of my interesting (to me) word/phrase origins on you for some time. So, here goes.
“No dice” — what a person says when he refuses to accept a proposition or course of action.
In the early 1900s in many states, dice-gambling was popular but illegal. How to get around the law? Hide the dice when the cops came, of course. That way, the main evidence against you—the dice—couldn’t be produced in court, leading to your case being dismissed. So that’s what gamblers did: hid the dice, and sometimes even swallowed them!
A reporter for The Port Arthur Daily News (Texas) wrote a story in 1921 about when an officer testified at trial and admitted that he could not find any dice when he arrested the defendants. The judge ruled that the defendants could not be convicted because there were “no dice.”
It is considered highly probable that the “no dice = no conviction” decision is the origin of today’s use of “no dice” to mean “nothing doing.”