Linda Dunn
Sunday, June 19, 2022 is Juneteenth and last year’s Gallup Poll showed that 60% of us know nothing or only a little bit about the holiday.
I’m one of the ignorant ones.
I, along with most of my peers who attended school in the 60s, were taught that the Emancipation Proclamation ended slavery in 1863. I later realized that this couldn’t possibly be true.
When has a government program ever worked the way it was intended, let alone achieved immediate and positive results?
William Seward, President Lincoln’s Secretary of State, best summarized the problem: “We show our sympathy with slavery by emancipating slaves where we cannot reach them and holding them in bondage where we can set them free.”
There was a good reason for this.
At that time, a young male field slave would fetch about $800 and a skilled blacksmith could go for over $2,000. Compare those prices to the cost of cotton growing land in that era: $6.00 an acre.
Today, the rich often move their funds offshore to avoid paying taxes. During the Civil War, many Southerners moved their slaves to Texas to avoid them being freed by Union troops.
In 1860, there were 182,566 slaves in Texas. By 1865, there were an estimated quarter million slaves in the Lone Star State.
About two-and-a-half years after they were supposed to be free, Union Major-General Granger arrived in Galveston on June 19th and made it official. He then advised the former slaves to stay where they were, work for wages, and not gather at military posts or be seen idling.
A few months later, the United States ratified the 13th Amendment.
Southerners tried hard to stop that ratification, arguing that gradual emancipation would be better.
For them – of course – not for those enslaved.
Indiana was not a slave state but we had residents who escaped slavery and settled in our county.
If you pay a visit to the James Whitcomb Riley museum this month you can learn about George Knox, Greenfield’s first black barber and a friend of the Riley family. You can also view shaving mugs like the ones Knox paid James Whitcomb Riley to paint.
Knox was the second black to arrive in Greenfield and the first verified escaped slave. Irvin Hunt, Greenfield’s first black citizen, had fled to Indiana after Nat Turner’s uprising in the South and while he told many stories about his time in the south, he avoided talking about his own status.
Hunt worked for several years at the Hancock Democrat newspaper and James Whitcomb Riley was a frequent visitor to the Hunt home. Riley admired Irvin’s stories and fishing skills, saying Irvin was “able to catch fish where there are none.”
Hunt had lived along the Brandywine, in what is now Riley Park.
Junius Hunt, Irvin’s son, served in the “Colored Troops” during the Civil War and died of wounds received in battle.
Members of the black “Delaney Settlement” in New Palestine as well as the Trail family near Shirley also sent sons into battle, and some of them never returned.
After escaping slavery during the war, George Knox worked for the Union troops and forged lasting friendships with soldiers from Greenfield. He became a well-loved barber and a community activist before moving to Indianapolis, where he operated several barber shops and became the owner of the Indianapolis Freeman (black) newspaper.
His grandson, George Levi Knox II, became a Tuskegee Airman and was one of the first 12 African Americans to become combat pilots. At the rank of Captain, he was the “squad’s most experienced Negro flier.”
The Ransome Neal family also escaped slavery during the Civil War before settling in Hancock County and one son, Marcellus, became the first African-American male to graduate from Indiana University. The Neal-Marshall Center on the IU Bloomington campus is jointly named for him and Frances Marshall from Rushville, the first black female to graduate from IU.
Our black friends and neighbors have achieved much over the last 150 plus years despite segregation, Jim Crow laws, and the irrational claims of superiority by those of us with Aryan features.
They are part of what really makes America great, and it’s long past time that we recognized this.
Happy Juneteenth!
A lifelong resident of Hancock County, Linda Dunn is an author and retired Department of Defense employee. Send comments to [email protected].
