Juneteenth: Reflecting on the Past, and Working Towards a More Inclusive Future
Today, known as Juneteenth, marks a holiday that has been celebrated for over 150 years and was recently commemorated as a federal holiday. Yet, it is often overlooked by a large number of people. Juneteenth commemorates the day that chattel slavery ended in the United States, when the news of the Emancipation Proclamation finally reached the enslaved people of the westernmost Confederate state, Texas, in 1865. In short, it is a second Independence Day.
The Emancipation Proclamation took effect January 1, 1863 and freed those who were enslaved in Confederate states. News of this freedom was slow to spread as Union representatives gradually travelled through the South and slave owners were often left to choose when and how to disseminate this information. It was not until June 19th, 1865 that Major General Gordon Granger arrived in Galveston Bay and finally announced that the more than 250,000 enslaved Black people in Texas were free by executive decree (Source: Smithsonian Museum of African American History & Culture).
Emancipation Day celebration, June 19, 1900 held in "East Woods" on East 24th Street in Austin. Credit: Austin History Center
It is still not widely known to many that it took so long for news of the Proclamation to be spread. Further, many people are unaware of the Juneteenth holiday. Such lack of awareness is grievously commonplace when it comes to recognizing the history of African Americans and the role of enslaved people in American history. This includes the history of paleontology in the United States. In an effort to recognize the painful history of slavery and the crucial contributions enslaved peoples made to the United States as we know it, PRI would like to share the story of a major milestone in early American paleontology.
In the 1700s, natural history (which the field of paleontology emerged from) was typically the pursuit of wealthy white male members of the gentry class who had the monetary means to pursue their naturalist interests. One of the first, if not the first, technical identifications of an American fossil vertebrate to be made in what would become known as the United States was reported by one such individual, British naturalist Mark Catesby. Catesby, however, did not discover the fossil, nor did he make the first identification. Around 1725, the fossil teeth of a large mammal—which we now know to be a Columbian mammoth, an extinct relative of modern elephants—were discovered on a plantation called Stono, just outside of Charleston, South Carolina. Enslaved individuals, who are unnamed in the written record, recognized that the teeth looked like the molars of a modern elephant. While mammoth teeth are larger than those of modern elephants, they have similar parallel rows of low ridges. These ridged teeth are suitable for grinding tough vegetation, like grass, the primary food source for both mammoths and elephants.
Modern elephants are not native to North America, and many people who lived there in the 1700s had no first-hand knowledge of them. Historically, African elephants were found throughout much of sub-Saharan Africa (Ripple et al. 2015, Collapse of the world’s largest herbivores). The unnamed people who identified the fossil teeth were likely taken from the region of modern-day Angola or the Congo*, and so were able to make their astute identification through expertise lent by experiences and observations of elephants in Central Africa before they were forcibly brought to North America. When Catesby visited the plantation, the slaves shared their insights, and the naturalist agreed that the teeth had elephant-like features based on his own experience seeing elephant teeth brought to England from Africa (Catesby, The natural history of Carolina, Florida and the Bahama Islands, pp. vii). While it was the enslaved observers who made the identification, it is Catesby that history remembers by name, because he published his account of speaking with them in 1743.
The identification of the fossil teeth was made over a century before Charles Darwin would introduce the world to his theory of evolution by natural selection in 1859, and at a time when extinction was not the widely understood idea that it is today (Loren C. Eiseley, Myth and Mammoth in Archaeology). Decades after Catesby’s visit to Stono, French naturalist Georges Cuvier heard of Catesby’s account while developing a theory that large fossils, such as the teeth found at Stono, belonged to prehistoric creatures that had perished long ago. In an 1806 publication, Cuvier included the story of the enslaved identifiers. In fact, we now know that they “had correctly recognized a fossil elephant species before any European naturalist realized that extinct mammoths were related to living elephants.” (Adrienne Mayor, Wonders & Marvels Blog).
It is worth noting that finding scholarly sources discussing this important identification made by slaves is no easy task. Catesby’s account is one sentence long. One of the few well-sourced modern scholarly articles that mention this story was published by George Gaylord Simpson in 1942: “The Beginnings of Vertebrate Paleontology in North America.” Simpson’s treatment of the event clearly reflects the harmful biases common in pre-civil rights 20th century America. He describes this “first technical identification of an American fossil vertebrate—a lowly beginning for a pursuit that was to be graced by some of the most eminent men in American and in scientific history” (p. 134). Dismissive and condescending words such as these have been pervasive throughout the history of science. Biases, both explicit and implicit, and lack of representation have presented, and continue to present, major obstacles for scientists of color.
In 2014, the Columbian mammoth (Mammuthus columbi (Falconer, 1857)) was formally recognized as the state fossil of South Carolina in recognition of its identification by enslaved Africans at Stono (McLeod, Reuters). This formal recognition is just one aspect of the reexamination of the history of science with the goal of better representing the contributions of marginalized groups. Nevertheless, there is still much work to be done to correct the record and properly recognize the contributions of Black people throughout the history of paleontology in the United States.
Graphic courtesy of the National Museum of African American History and Culture’s Social Media Toolkit
This Juneteenth, take a moment to think of the individuals who helped make this country, and from whom freedom was unfairly stolen. Celebrate their achievements, resilience, and excellence. Explore the work being done by Black paleontologists today as the field strives to become truly inclusive. For further information on the history and significance of Juneteenth, we encourage you to explore the wonderful resources provided by The National Museum of African American History and Culture (Link).
*This statement is based on what is known about the enslaved individuals who participated in the influential 1739 "Stono Rebellion" and the reports that many enslaved Peoples at Stono spoke Portuguese (meaning they likely were taken from modern day Angola or the Congo). (John K. Thornton. (1991). African Dimensions of the Stono Rebellion. The American Historical Review, 96(4), 1101-1113. doi:10.2307/2164997).