HISTORY + RACISM
How The Vagrancy Act of 1866 Turned Black Freedom Into a Crime
After Juneteenth, laws forced Black Americans to labor
As Juneteenth approaches, the nation is preparing to celebrate Black Americans' freedom. Specifically, the holiday will commemorate the moment when 2,000 federal troops arrived in Galveston, Texas, to demand the release of the 250,000 Black people from slavery — they became "free by executive decree, on June 19, 1865. However, many people fail to realize that White southerners continued to challenge Black people's freedom long after Confederate General Robert E. Lee surrendered. One illustration of this point would be the language used in Field Order №3: "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 at military posts and that they will not be supported in idleness either there or elsewhere." In other words, even after Black Americans became free, White people expected them to remain working for the same families who enslaved them, and they were warned idleness would not be tolerated, which undermined the very concept of liberty. You are free, but you must work for those who brutalized you is not the win many Black Americans hoped and fought for.
