Photo by Oladimeji Odunsi on Unsplash
Juneteenth only became a federal holiday in 2021, although black communities in the US have been celebrating this event for hundreds of years prior. As a freelancer, even though federal holidays don’t really apply to me, I’ve been doing some reading today to understand more fully the meaning of holiday that increases the meaning of what it means to be free in our country.
Let’s take a look at a brief timeline of events that helped to eventually shape Juneteenth.
When people think about slavery, if they do so at all, they may only think about the Emancipation Proclamation, which Abraham Lincoln issued on January 1, 1863. This proclamation declared, “all persons held as slaves within any State or designated part of a State, the people whereof shall then be in rebellion against the United States, shall be then, thenceforward, and forever free.” Of course, the southern states rebelled during the Civil War to keep slavery in their grasp, and that war did not end until the Confederacy surrendered in 1865.
In Nikole Hannah-Jones’s brilliant 1619 project, she notes that slavery began in the US in August of 1619, when “a ship appeared on this horizon, near Point Comfort, a coastal port in the English colony of Virginia. It carried more than 20 enslaved Africans, who were sold to the colonists.”
So, 244 years after slave traders first brought African slaves to the colonies, Lincoln issued the Emancipation Proclamation. It took two and a half more years (June 19th, 1865) for a union general, General Granger, to proclaim slaves to be free in Texas, one of the western most rebelling states. And even with all of these proclamations flying around, it took a series of amendments to slowly grant rights to freed slaves. The 13th Amendment was ratified in 1865 officially abolishing slavery (“Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude, except as a punishment for crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted, shall exist within the United States, or any place subject to their jurisdiction.”); the 14th Amendment ensured citizenship rights to freed slaves; and the 15th Amendment guaranteed the right to vote to citizens, regardless of their “race, color, or previous condition of servitude.”
And even after those amendments, we’ve had Jim Crow laws, mass incarceration and judicial bigotry, civil and voting rights backsliding, and efforts to erase history to contend with. It’s no wonder it can be hard to think that July 4th as a celebration of independence is not complete since it does not recognize the freedom of all the US’s citizens. Juneteenth helps us to remember that the freedom project in the US is ongoing -- it is not complete, and we must continue to fight for the rights of all people.
This is a time to continue to support efforts to enshrine civil and voting rights for all citizens, including work to end police brutality. Today reminds us to keep educating ourselves about our history and all of the communities that make up our country. Here are few that I encourage you to look into as you take this day to think about US history:
The 1619 Project by Nikole Hannah-Jones
The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness by Michelle Alexander
The Hate U Give by Angie Thomas
28 Organizations That Empower Black Communities, Buzzfeed (including Black Girls Code and the NAACP.
If you have any other books or communities you’d like to share, do so in the comments below.
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