I’m sorry. I’m just a sucker for these stories. It’s nice to step back every once in a while and see that we really are doing something momentous as a nation. We’re still hand in hand with folks who held hands with slaves. We’re within one lifetime (albeit a really long one) of slavery and a black man could be elected president next week.
(via Bitch PhD)
Tiny Cat Pants 
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Since Texas was still part of the Confederacy when the Emancipation Proclamation was enacted, her mother was also born into slavery. The Confederacy didn’t recognize Lincoln’s authority to declare her free. The Union Army could not enforce the Proclamation in Texas because they weren’t there in 1864 — Texas wasn’t occupied until May of 1865, I think. Finally, newborns did not self-liberate unless someone lugged them off to Union lines. Since slave status passed through the maternal line, that’s the more critical “wow” — here’s a woman who had things gone differently in the 1860s would have been enslaved (not because her daddy was a slave, but because her mama was) and yet she’s lived long enough to vote for a black man that has a good shot at winning the Presidency.
Wasn’t it June of 65, thus the reason for Juneteenth celebrations?
Anyway, it is amazing and I’m happy to see it.