Juneteenth, a holiday that most Americans had never even heard of until Congress made it a federal holiday in 2021 to celebrate the end of slavery, is starting to acquire some very unpleasant associations.

According to CNN:

At least 22 people were injured and one person was killed by gunfire overnight in Illinois, in a peaceful Juneteenth celebration turned deadly, police say.

An unknown number of suspects fired multiple rounds from multiple weapons into the large crowd of people gathered to celebrate Juneteenth, according to a statement from the DuPage County Sheriff’s Office.

Several other victims were injured in the chaos as people attempted to flee the area, and victims are being treated at hospitals in the area, the sheriff’s office said.

No suspects are in custody, police said.

The shooting took place around 12:30 a.m. in a parking lot in Willowbrook, about 21 miles west of Chicago.

...and this, from WSPA in North Carolina:

ASHEVILLE, N.C. (WSPA) – A juvenile was charged in connection to a shooting that injured two people at a Juneteenth festival on Saturday.

According to the Asheville Police Department, officers responded to reports of shots fired at a downtown festival in the area of Court Plaza around 8:15 p.m.

Upon arrival, officers found two juveniles suffering from gunshot wounds.

Both were taken to a nearby hospital for their injuries. One has been released, and the other remains in critical but stable condition.

...and this from San Diego, according to local NBC7:

One person is dead and another was injured after a shooting broke out at a Liberty Station park during a Juneteenth celebration Saturday evening, according to San Diego police. The shooter has not yet been found, police said.

The shooting was reported at 6:45 p.m. at NTC Park at Cushing Road and Womble Road, where personnel from San Diego Police Department and San Diego Fire Department were seen giving CPR to one victim.

...and this from St. Louis, according to ABC News, which doesn't mention Juneteenth but suggests it in quoted comments about family gatherings near the bottom of the story:

An overnight shooting at a party in a downtown St. Louis office building injured at least 10 people and killed one person, St. Louis police chief Robert Tracy said at a press conference Sunday afternoon.

Eight out of the 11 victims, including the deceased, were minors, according to St. Louis police. Five of the victims were male, while six were female.

The victims are between 15 and 19 years old, according to police.

The previous two years have seen the same sort of Juneteenth violence, with black gunmen shooting black people attending festivities, and mass lootings not uncommon.  If you didn't know what Juneteenth was, you'd think it was a good day to board up the shops and avoid public gatherings.  How did it morph into something better described as black-on-black violence day?  Who told the shooters that today's a fine day to get out there and shoot other black people?

Obviously, there are some peaceful celebrations — this one described by the Santa Fe New Mexican describes what appears to be a lovely summer celebration.  I've always been a supporter of the idea of Juneteenth, because it involves all of us — those who were freed after enslavement, but also those among our ancestors (black and white) who died to free the enslaved people after our country's bloodiest war.  But there are too many of these nasty events to avert one's eyes and pretend nothing else is happening.

Part of the blame has to be a failure to understand the event as it evolved historically and then disappeared, only to be revived in wake of the George Floyd riots.

It began spontaneously, as family celebrations by black people in Texas, who got news of the end of slavery on June 19, 1865, three months after the Civil War had ended. 

According to the Santa Fe New Mexican:

Juneteenth, observed June 19, honors the day in 1865 when Union troops arrived in Galveston Bay in Texas and announced the freedom of more than 250,000 enslaved Black people — 2½ years after the Emancipation Proclamation was issued. While celebrations of the event had been held in Texas and in many other communities throughout the nation for more than 150 years, it wasn’t recognized as a federal holiday until 2021. That was the year the first celebration was held in Santa Fe.

It was happy, joyful, and family-oriented.  What could be more wonderful than celebrating freedom after bondage?  What could be more natural and normal and spontaneous?  And why couldn't everyone who isn't black celebrate this, too?

Today it sounds angry and downright dangerous, based on these violent manifestations. 

Thomas Lifson yesterday wrote about some of the problems here.

To start, it's been distorted in meaning by radical intellectuals into a grievance group event, with some arguing that it shouldn't be joyful at all; it should be a time to nurse boiling rage and grievances at being "robbed," as one put it, rather than to savor the freedom from bondage.

This sort of ignorance keeps real knowledge of the holiday and its wholesome origins from reaching the ears of young people, who might benefit from what it was and what it meant.

A look at the profiles of the shooters and those engaged in the violence on this holiday suggests that they are largely young black men without intact families.

That's sad.  Since slavery's end, the black family had endured both slavery and the Jim Crow horrors with families intact.  The damage to black families came in the 1960s, with Lyndon Johnson's "Great Society" and "War on Poverty" programs, which were cynically crafted at least in part with the aim of creating a permanent black voting base for the Democrats, except that Johnson used far more repulsive language.  Those programs effectively replaced fathers with the state, doing great harm to the black family that had otherwise managed to survive oppression.  Shelby Steele writes an important op-ed in the Wall Street Journal describing that terrible dynamic, which serves as a Petri dish for violence.

Another problem seems to be social media and the greedy entertainment complex — checked out any lyrics lately from the most popular black rappers on YouTube?  Play those over and over to impressionable young people without any other input, and see what happens.

Now we see the results of this grievance-group obsession and the impulse toward violence to solve any personal or public problem out there, and it's ruining a great holiday that should be celebrated as enthusiastically as every other holiday. 

We shouldn't be reading about mass shooting events every time Juneteenth rolls around.  We should be looking at why these things are happening and whether it's really Juneteenth as its original creators had once celebrated, or now just another repeat of the George Floyd riots as a sort of baleful commemoration day anyone who doesn't like violence should want to stay away from.

This holiday shouldn't bring to mind mass violence every time the word comes up.  Maybe some real leadership from the black community will finally end the grievance-group nursings and restore the holiday's original celebratory origins.

Image: Pixabay, Pixabay License.