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Freedom for All Americans, 2017 Memorial Day ~ Stockton Rural Cemetery

by Khubaka, Michael Harris (blackagriculture [at] yahoo.com)
Today, we begin preparations for Memorial Day 2017, honoring the founders and early members of the Stockton African Baptist Church and Ebenezer A.M.E. Church in the City of Stockton. Many who are interred within Block 27 ~ Stockton Rural Cemetery are unknown, without grave markers or in need of repair, together we will honor the past as an example of the work of the California State Legislature creating AB 783 (Weber) establishing statutory authority for the California Commission for the Preservation of African American, History, Culture and Institutions, honoring the past, while preparing our children's, children for amazing future opportunities.
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Freedom for all Americans was marked today, as the beginning of the end of the US Civil War. Confederate Army General Robert E. Lee of Northern Virginia surrender on April 9, 1865 at Appomattox Courthouse to Union Army General Robert E. Lee. Many other Confederate armies were still in the field and fighting, while many continued to be held in chattel slavery throughout America.

On April 26, 1865, Confederate General Joseph E. Johnston would surrender his forces to William T. Sherman in North Carolina, General Richard Taylor's forces in Alabama surrendered on May 4th. On June 2, 1865 General Edmund Kirby Smith surrendered the Confederate Department of the Trans-Mississippi. On June 18, 1865, Union General Gordon Granger arrived at the Port of Galveston Island with 2,000 federal troops to begin the 7 week campaign throughout Texas on behalf of the federal government to secure the final southernmost Confederate Ports, La Salle, Brazos de Santiago and Brownsville, the overland border with Mexico and enforce the Emancipation Proclamation, ending slavery in Texas.

On June 19, standing on the balcony of Galveston's Island Ashton Villa, Granger read aloud the contents of "General Order No. 3", announcing the total emancipation of slaves:
The people of Texas are informed that, in accordance with a proclamation from the Executive of the United States, all slaves are free. This involves an absolute equality of personal rights and rights of property between former masters and slaves, and the connection heretofore existing between them becomes that between employer and hired labor. 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.

After the US Civil War, people of African ancestry began the task to bestow honor, dignity and respect for fallen Union Soldiers that today is called Memorial Day throughout the United States of America.

Many believe this act began a renaissance of the restoration of an African concept of an afterlife. The ancient notion of a monotheistic belief system with a reunion with the creator of all things seen and unseen, connecting the supreme being of the universe in a ritual connection through revered ancestors, connecting life and death is the original reason for Memorial Day.

May 1, 1865, provides the earliest known documentation of previously enslaved Africans in the low country of South Carolina, reconnecting ancient African burial traditions.

Professor David Blight of Yale University and many other scholars have researched the events beginning on May 1, 1865 when a group of former enslaved Africans in Charleston, South Carolina began the task of giving a proper burial to 257 Union soldiers who’d been put into a mass grave, many were US Colored Troops who paid the ultimate sacrifice during the US Civil War.

The ancient connection to “proper burial with honors” by people of African ancestry in Charleston, SC was consecrated by the new cemetery with “an amazing parade of over 10,000 people.

The event was initially called “Decoration Day” and was led by 3,000 school children, followed by hundreds of women and men with baskets of flowers and crosses and followed by uniformed Union soldiers, including US Colored Troops. .

During the US Civil War, many US Soldiers lived in horrible conditions, the vast majority of US Colored Troops died from exposure and disease. This was the stated reason for the creation of the mass grave site by the Confederate Army. A total of 28 formerly enslaved African men went to the site and re-buried the men properly, largely as a thank you for helping fight for their freedom. They built a protective fence around the cemetery, and on the outside, put the words, “Martyrs of the Race Course.”

Today, we begin preparations for Memorial Day 2017, honoring the founders and early members of the Stockton African Baptist Church and Ebenezer A.M.E. Church in the City of Stockton. Many who are interred within Block 27 ~ Stockton Rural Cemetery are unknown, without grave markers or in need of repair, together we will honor the past as an example of the work creating the California Commission for the Preservation of African American, History, Culture and Institutions, honoring the past, while preparing our children's, children for amazing future opportunities.
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