To celebrate Juneteenth, Grammy winner Macy Gray wants to cancel the American flag: ‘Divisive and incorrect.’ But wait – what happened on Juneteenth, June 19, 1865?

Black slaves of Galveston, and then all Texas, were notified they were free. Who notified them? Union troops under overall command of Gen. Ulysses S. Grant. And what flag were they flying. The American flag, of course

And why were the slaves free? They had been freed legally by the 1863 Emancipation Proclamation, issued by President Lincoln. They had been freed practically on April 9, when Lee surrendered to Grant at Appomattox.

So the people who are advocating a Juneteenth holiday are:

1. Trying to dishonor and replace the flag flown that day.
2. Pulling down the statues of Lincoln and Grant, who made Juneteenth possible.
3. Disrespecting the Declaration of Independence and Constitution that laid the foundation for freeing the slaves.
4. Calling for reparations for slavery, as if 330,000 dead White men and boys who died fighting for the Union were not reparations already paid. This does not count Black soldiers who died for the Union, or Confederate deaths, or the many thousands of amputated arms and legs that lay outside field hospitals, stacked like cordwood.

What do you call people who advocate a holiday celebrating the freeing of Black slaves, but who then disrespect and dishonor the very flag and great men who made freeing them possible? Self-undermining fools? Historical ignoramuses? Colossal ingrates?

For an alternate view of the flag, listen to Johnny Cash:

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