Word: juneteenth
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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Perhaps it is only fitting that Juneteenth (Random House; 368 pages; $25), Ralph Ellison's long-awaited second novel, almost 50 years in the making, would be published in 1999, the centennial year of Duke Ellington's birth. For Ellington and Ellison, along with the painter Romare Bearden, were practitioners of a shared aesthetic, three titans of an African-American modernism, embodying in their work elegance, eloquence and elan...
Dedicated by Ellison "to that Vanished Tribe into Which I Was Born: The American Negroes"--he proudly and defiantly resisted the successive fads to rename that tribe--Juneteenth turns on the complex relationship between an ex-jazzman and trickster turned preacher, Alonzo Hickman, and his white--or nearly white--foster child, Bliss. Hickman reluctantly agrees to midwife and then raise this child of a white woman whose false accusation of rape had caused his brother to be lynched. Bliss, though lovingly nurtured by his stepfather, eventually runs away in search of his lost mother and later transforms himself into Senator...
BOOK II In June the late Ralph Ellison's Juneteenth will come out, 47 years after his Invisible Man. Other tardy second novels...
Spontaneous celebrations broke out in Galveston and spread around the state--and thus the holiday of "Juneteenth" began. Traditionally, the date has been marked in Texas with parades, picnics, dances and other events; in 1979 state legislator Al Edwards led a successful push to make it an official state holiday. Juneteenth has also caught on elsewhere: celebrations are held in more than 30 states, and this year the holiday should have even more of a national presence. On April 10 the U.S. Senate approved a resolution sponsored by majority leader Trent Lott of Mississippi and minority leader Thomas Daschle...
...June 19, 1865, Texas slaves learned that the emancipation Proclamation had set them free -- fully two years before. Now, on the 130th anniversary of the delayed day of freedom that many African-Americans celebrate as Juneteenth, a new service, "NetNoir," is making its bid to bring black culture to the mostly-white, mostly upscale online world, via America Online and the Internet. "We're creating something to encourage people to buy the hardware, to buy a computer and a modem," says co-founder Malcolm CasSelle. "Before, they didn't feel there was any reason to be on line." The service...