Carm Almonor Gives Juneteenth Keynote Address

Carm Almonor, Ph.D., visiting assistant professor of Political Science and African American Studies at Seton Hall University, served as the keynote speaker for the Township of Millburn’s Juneteenth celebration held at the Millburn Free Public Library on Thursday, June 20, 2024. The event was co-hosted by the NAACP of the Oranges & Maplewood Branch and also featured Stephanie Mallios, who spoke on behalf of Millburn’s Cultural Engagement Diversity and Arts Committee, Lady Tricia Scipio, from the NAACP of the Oranges & Maplewood, and State Senator John McKeon from the 27th Legislative District.

In providing the keynote address, Almonor discussed the importance of Juneteenth to multiple freedom projects, particularly, American independence, African emancipation and hemispheric anti-colonialism. He related Juneteenth to the work of authenticating American democracy within a commemorative "season of freedom" that also includes the Fourth of July holiday. Almonor’s historical discussion raised themes of both cautious lessons and exemplary democratic models: "like each of our independence markers for Africans, Latinos, women, workers and others, Juneteenth is no small, isolated or peripheral history, but invokes the central question of tyranny versus democracy."

Almonor began by introducing and critiquing the common narrative of Juneteenth—that Union General Gordon Granger delivered the belated news of freedom to an uninformed enslaved population in Galveston, TX, months after the Civil War’s 1865 conclusion in Appomattox, VA and over two and a half years after Lincoln’s 1863 Emancipation Proclamation had declared all seceding Southern states free. In fact, Almonor noted, the paper Proclamation required enforcement against an occupying Confederate Army through the Civil War. In addition, despite Granger’s presentation of General Order 3, two of the five Southern border states who had not seceded or fought in the war, and were, thus, not subject to the Proclamation, failed to ratify freedom until early December of 1865. Almonor asserted this and 13th Amendment ratification generally as the accurate end of all U.S. slavery, while nonetheless applauding President Biden’s 2021 federal expansion of the Texas holiday.

Building on this introduction, Almonor emphasized two historical contexts of Juneteenth with relevance to today: He highlighted patterns both of recalcitrant, anti-democratic backsliding and of resilient, Black, White and multicultural democratic heroism before and after June 19, 1865. Beginning with Haitian Revolutionary Independence in 1804, he noted the democratic beacon role of this, his ancestral homeland. The small nation spurred Latin American independence from Spain and became a symbol for African American abolitionism. Yet, one of several successive backslides ensued as the Louisiana Purchase, gained by Jefferson from Napoleon in 1803 as a result of Haiti’s success, would add antebellum fuel to the North-South conflict over new territorial land for slavery. As Almonor observed, "a great paradox…the spoils from costly fires of human freedom struggle were converted into kindling for a costlier new fire of further freedom struggle. In the end, African human freedom had vastly benefited both American territorial prosperity and moral standing."

Yet, freedom lessons remained unlearned as cycles of Black freedom and unfreedom continued: 13th-15th Amendment Reconstruction gave way to Hayes-Tilden’s near century of undemocratic and deadly segregation compromises, workarounds and exceptions. Almonor outlined historical and modern examples of our equivocation on freedom. He nonetheless claimed the hope of a counterweight American tradition of multicultural democracy. Speaking directly to the legislators in attendance and the mostly suburban, White audience, Almonor lauded the Wilmington, NC confederate-massacred multiracial legislature of 1898, radical Reconstructionist Congressional leader Thaddeus Stevens, radical civilian leader John Brown, abolitionist Quakers and William Loyd Garrison, and suffragist-abolitionist Susan B. Anthony. These and countless other diverse allies provided vital complements to the leadership of Frederick Douglass’s oratory and North Star prose, Harriet Tubman’s heroic exoduses and military command, and the final Civil War blow of 200,000 Black Union enlistees. In the end, Almonor admonished all to commemorate our diverse freedom heroes of Juneteenth by emulating their values with consistent democratic action.

Almonor holds a Ph.D. in Africology & African American Studies from Temple University, a Juris Doctorate in Constitutional Law with a Public Policy concentration from the Boston University School of Law, a Master of Liberal Arts in Urban Education Policy and Cultural Anthropology from the University of Pennsylvania and a Bachelor of Arts in Africana Studies & Political Science from Rutgers University.

To learn more about the Department of Political Science as well as the Africana Studies program, please contact the College of Arts and Sciences.  

Categories: Nation and World