During a full district school board meeting, a father from Illinois who broadcasts a weekend radio show slammed critical race theory. Ty Smith, a father who argues critical race theory is seriously flawed, blasted schools for teaching the divisive philosophy that has enraged and infuriated parents throughout the country. According to Faithwire, Smith, a black man, started his address by remembering a childhood incident in which he and other children on public assistance were pushed to be the last to eat lunch in elementary school. He got very upset as a third-grader with his buddies not in his group and decided to stop speaking to them. He learned as an adult that they were not to blame for their segregation.
“I’m mad at them for something that wasn’t even their fault… they weren’t looking down on me. They didn’t think they were better than me,” Smith argued.
“I’m the one that came up with those false perceptions of what my friends were. Not them,” Smith added.
He then went on to debunk the critical race theory ideas that white people have it better in life because they are white and that black people are oppressed because of white people, using his own personal experience as evidence that neither of these claims were accurate. “How do I have two medical degrees if I’m sitting here oppressed?” Smith’s question drew applause from the other parents and guests at the packed gathering.
“No mom, no dad in the house. Worked my way through college, sat there and hustled my butt off to get through college,” Smith continued. Smith slammed the argument that white people “kept him from” achieving his goals. He said, “Not one white person ever came to me and said ‘well, son, you know you’ll never be able to get anywhere because the black people.’” The Illinois parent stressed how today’s black youth are taught that they will not be successful because “the white man is going to keep you down.”
A look at the history behind Juneteenth and what you need to know about the day that commemorates the end of slavery in the United States.
Juneteenth, observed on June 19, commemorates the end of all slavery in the United States and is celebrated across the country.
This year, however, in its 156th anniversary, will be the first year Juneteenth will be celebrated as a federal holiday. The House of Representatives voted 415-14 Wednesday to make Juneteenth the 12th federal holiday. President Biden then signed the bill into law Thursday, making Friday an official federal holiday.
“Juneteenth marks both a long hard night of slavery subjugation and a promise of a brighter morning to come,” Biden said. He called the day a reminder of the “terrible toll that slavery took on the country and continues to take.”
General Gordon Granger, 1861. From an issue of Frank Leslie’s Illustrated Almanac. (Photo by Buyenlarge/Getty Images)
Black Americans began to celebrate Juneteenth to mark the anniversary of June 19, 1865, the day when Texas – the last rebel state – officially abolished slavery.
On that day, Union Major Gen. Gordon Granger and his regiment rode into Galveston with news the Civil War had ended and that the state’s more than 250,000 enslaved people were free.
It was more than two years after President Abraham Lincoln signed the Emancipation Proclamation – which went into effect on Jan. 1, 1863 – and nearly six months after the 13th Amendment was passed by Congress officially abolishing the institution of slavery.
Texas was the last in rebellion following the end of the Civil War and the Emancipation Proclamation had little impact in the Lone Star State due to the minimal number of Union troops to enforce it.
(The Portal to Texas History Austin History Center, Austin Public Library.)
However, following the surrender of General Robert E. Lee in April 1865, and the arrival of Granger’s regiment, the Union forces were strong enough to enforce Lincoln’s executive order.https://ec15a42e1873a8684999884020b50b18.safeframe.googlesyndication.com/safeframe/1-0-38/html/container.html
“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 military posts and that they will not be supported in idleness either there or elsewhere.”
The above order was issued by Granger on June 19, 1865, and it was met with a range of reactions from pure shock to immediate jubilation. That celebration has been coined “Juneteenth” and, for decades, freed men and women and their descendants have annually commemorated the anniversary.
Members of the parade perform during the 48th Annual Juneteenth Day Festival on June 19, 2019 in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. (Getty for VIBE)
The celebrations typically feature music, BBQs, prayer services and other activities. They spread as Blacks migrated from Texas to other parts of the country.
However, economic and cultural forces in the early 20th century provided a decline in Juneteenth celebrations — at least outside of Texas.
Meanwhile, in classrooms and history books, little or nothing was mentioned of Gen. Granger’s order as Lincoln’s proclamation on Jan. 1, 1863 became the date signaling the end of slavery.
Juneteenth received a resurgence during the Civil Rights movement of the 1950s and 1960s — particularly after the Poor Peoples March to Washington, D.C., in 1968, which was cut short on Juneteenth of that year.
Chants for Antwon Rose Jr. fill the air on Fifth Avenue during Pittsburgh’s Juneteenth Parade from Freedom Corner in the Hill District to Point State Park, Saturday, June 23, 2018. The parade served as an outlet for the crowd to protest East Pittsburgh police officer Michael Rosfeld’s fatal shooting of 17-year-old Antwon Rose, a Woodland Hills High School honors student. (Andrew Russell/Pittsburgh Tribune-Review via AP)
In the years that followed, interest in Juneteenth continued to grow as Blacks in the United States sought to make sure the events of 1865 were not lost to history.
In 1980, Texas became the first state to make Juneteenth an official holiday through the efforts of Al Edwards, an African American state legislator.
The date became a point of contention in 2020 when the Trump administration announced it would hold a major campaign rally in Tulsa, Oklahoma, on June 19. The announcement sparked a furor among Democrats and the president’s critics for both the date and the location.
Tulsa was the site of a 1921 massacre of Black residents and the destruction of Black-owned businesses. Trump soon announced he was moving the rally to June 20 “out of respect.”
Today nearly every state, and the District of Columbia, holds Juneteenth observances.
We never witnessed President Trump go off on a reporter like the way Biden has. Apparently, as the previous White House Doctor says, a cognizant evaluation exam is in order to ascertain the degree of impairment. Does Joe the Turtle have a withering cranium?
Americans of all stripes must know that our president has the ability to perform the most important job in the world. We have witnessed his performance deteriorate for many years. Now, where he is facing the music, it is evident that Biden suffers from some form of a malady. We can access the symptoms from afar, but need confirmation from the medical people to validate the level of gradation. Do we have a DUMBDUMB holding the button?
So they had the Summit, whatever that is, then Joe Biden came out to face the press, or should we say, was pressed by the press, but Joe’s hands were empty. Yes, Dementia Joe, the rook-ee if there ever was one had is head beaten like a drum. Taken to the back forty like a juvenile while taught a lesson that he has already forgotten. Even CNN, Joe’s subsidiary, ramped up the tune of TAPS, Joe was DOA. The lesson here is a sad one; America’s hate for one man who loves America elected a lesser man who hates America has been bamboozled by the King.
Time for the shrink test. How much of Biden’s brain exists; that is the question? His cognitive ability is under question. As the news media has seen, Biden has fallen flat on his face during the G-7 conference.
Silencio from those in the know. Is Biden all there?
VA parents furious after graduation speaker’s ‘incendiary’ warning on racism and white supremacy
School board member tells students to remember ‘jihad’
The president of the student government introduced her, noting that she campaigned for presidential candidate Bernie Sanders and that her father, Esam Omeish, was a “leader and board member of the Dar al-Hijrah Islamic Center” – the namesake of a mosque attended by two 9/11 hijackers in 2001, and the radical imam Anwar Al-Awlaki, and Nidal Hasan, the 2009 Fort Hood shooter.
“I think it’s important for your viewers to know that Abrar Omeish’s comments here are incendiary comments are not the first example of divisive and anti-Semitic rhetoric,” Fairfax County Parent Gary Aiken told “Fox & Friends First” on Tuesday
Aiken said that several weeks ago, Omeish posted “vile anti-Semitic tweets on her social accounts,” which were linked to her official “non-partisan Fairfax County school board page.”
“That desecrates the Holy Land and kills Palestinians. And this caused huge outrage amongst over 250,000 Jewish Americans here in Northern Virginia and it sparked outrage across all political lines and there were calls for her to apologize. She offered no apology. She doubled down on it,” Aiken said.