An Annual Tradition: Ralph Ellison’s “Juneteenth”
In honor of the now national holiday of Juneteenth, we continue a new tradition of printing an excerpt from Ralph Ellison’s Juneteenth.
Overview
Here’s the basic storyline: a young boy of indeterminate “race,” whose momma was white and daddy was colored, was midwifed and raised by a Negro American jazz man and trombonist who became a preacher of the Word. The boy was called Bliss, and the Negro elder was Hickman, Daddy Hickman.
Bliss was raised in the bosom of the blues, where the sacred is secularized, and the secular is sacralized. Daddy Hickman molded Bliss into a young child preacher. Wearing a white tuxedo, Bliss would call-and-response preach in holy roller church services and tent revivals. But such a mixture of sacred power and the ways of the earthly flesh was too much for the young man to handle—he abandoned and rejected the old ways and went out into the secular, material world, becoming a movie maker and flim-flam man. Then, after making his way to Oklahoma, where he had an affair with a beautiful Omni-American woman who was part Native American, part Black American, and part European American, impregnating then abandoning her (too), the boy, now a man, remade himself yet again, this time as a race-baiting Senator, Adam Sunraider, from “a New England state.”
All in the narrative revolves around the Senator being shot, an assassination attempt by the child-man (son) left behind in Oklahoma, followed by the Senator calling for Daddy Hickman, who, at his bedside, tries to help the Senator to help Bliss remember not only what he left behind but that to which he had become a traitor.
The following excerpt is from a bedside conversation in which Hickman and the Senator recall the occasion of a great gittin’ up mornin’ of freedom called Juneteenth and the sermons they gave together that day.
Excerpt from Ellison’s Juneteenth
“The occasion? It was another revival, wasn’t it?’
‘Course, it was a revival, Bliss – but it was Juneteenth too. We were celebrating Emancipation and thanking God. Remember, it went on for seven days.’
‘Juneteenth,’ the Senator said, ‘I had forgotten the word.’
‘You’ve forgotten lots of important things from those days, Bliss.’
‘I suppose so, but to learn some of the things I’ve learned I had to forget some others. Do you still call it ‘Juneteenth,’ Revern’ Hickman? Is it still celebrated?’
Hickman looked at him with widened eyes, leaning forward as he grasped the arms of the chair.
‘Do we still? Why, I should say we do. You don’t think that because you left . . . Both, Bliss. Because we haven’t forgot what it means. Even if sometimes folks try to make us believe it never happened or that it was a mistake that it ever did . . .’
‘Juneteenth,’ the Senator said, closing his eyes, his bandaged head resting beneath his hands. Words of Emancipation didn’t arrive until the middle of June so they called it Juneteenth. So that was it, the night of Juneteenth celebration, his mind went on. The celebration of a gaudy illusion. . .”
. . . . “Tell us about it, Reveren’ Hickman . . .
We had to take the Word for bread and meat. We had to take the Word for food and shelter. We had to use the Word as a rock to build up a whole new nation, ’cause to tell it true, we were born again in chains of steel. Yes, and chains of ignorance. And all we knew was the spirit of the Word. We had no schools. We owned no tools, no cabins, no churches, not even our own bodies.
We were chained, young brothers, in steel. We were chained, young sisters, in ignorance. We were schoolless, toolless, cabinless – owned . . .
Amen, Reveren’ Bliss. We were owned and faced with the aweinspiring labor of transforming God’s Word into a lantern so that in the darkness we’d know where we were. Oh, God hasn’t been easy with us because He always plans for the loooong haul. He’s looking far ahead and this time He wants a well-tested people to work his will. He wants some sharp-eyed, quick-minded, generous-hearted people to give names to the things of this world and to its values. He’s tired of untempered tools and half-blind people to give names to the things of this world and to its values. He’s tired of untempered tools and half-blind masons!
Therefore, He’s going to keep on testing us against the rocks and in the fires. He’s going to plunge us into the ice-cold water. And each time we come out we’ll be blue and as tough as cold-blue steel! Ah yes! He means for us to be a new kind of human. Maybe we won’t be that people but we’ll be a part of that people, we’ll be an element in them, amen! He wants us limber as willow switches and he wants us tough as whip leather, so that when we have to bend, we can bend and snap back into place. He’s going to throw bolts of lightning to blast us so that we’ll have good footwork and lightning-fast minds.
He’ll drive us hither and yon around this land and make us run the gauntlet of hard times and tribulations, misunderstanding and abuse. And some will pity you and some will despise you. And some will try to use you and change you. And some will deny you and try to deal you out of the game. And sometimes you’ll feel so bad that you’ll wish you could die. But it’s all the pressure of God. He’s giving you a will and He wants you to use it. He’s giving you brains and He wants you to train them lean and hard so that you can overcome all the obstacles. Educate your minds! Make do with what you have so as to get what you need! Learn to look at what you see and not what somebody tells you is true.
Pay lip service to Caesar if you have to, but put your trust in God. Because nobody has a patent on truth or a copyright on the best way to live and serve Almighty God. Learn from what we’ve lived. Remember that when the labor’s back-breaking and the bossman’s mean our singing can lift us up. That it can strengthen us and make his meanness but the flyspeck irritation of an empty man. Roll with the blow like ole Jack Johnson. Dance on out of his way like Williams and Walker. Keep to the rhythm and you’ll keep to life.
God’s time is long; and all short-haul horses shall be like horses on a merry-go-round. Keep, keep, keep to the rhythm and you won’t get weary. Keep to the rhythm and you won’t get lost. We’re handicapped, amen! Because the Lord wants us strong! We started out with nothing but the Word – just like the others, but they’ve forgot it . . . We worked and stood up under hard times and tribulations. We learned patience and to understand Job. Of all the animals, man’s the only one not born knowing almost everything he’ll ever know. It takes him longer than an elephant to grow up because God didn’t mean him to leap to any conclusions, for God Himself is in the very process of things. We learned that all blessings come mixed with sorrow and all hardships have a streak of laughter.