Today is Juneteenth (short for “June Nineteenth”), a holiday especially dear to black communities in the United States. Juneteenth commemorates the emancipation of the last slaves on June 19, 1865, by federal troops in Galveston, Texas. The troops arrived to free the slaves just over two years after President Abraham Lincoln had signed the Emancipation Proclamation. Two hundred and fifty thousand of the last enslaved people were held in Texas (and not informed of their freedom) after the Emancipation Proclamation because of the lack of Union presence and Civil War fighting in the state. As a result, Texas was the first state to make Juneteenth an official holiday in 1979.
Juneteenth (or “Jubilee Day”) was made a United States federal holiday on Wednesday, June 17, 2021. The bill to make Juneteenth a federal holiday was unanimously passed in the Senate, signed by Joe Biden, and voted 415-14 in the House. Juneteenth is the most recent national holiday that has been established in the US since the creation of Martin Luther King Jr. Day in 1983.
At a White House celebration on Wednesday, Joe Biden declared that making Juneteenth a federal holiday is one of the ‘greatest honors’ he will have as President (watch the full video here). He continued his speech, saying that “All Americans can feel the power of this day, and learn from our history… Great nations don't ignore their most painful moments. They don't ignore those moments of the past. They embrace them. Great nations don't walk away."
Kamala Harris reaffirmed his statements, adding, “We are footsteps away from where President Abraham Lincoln signed the Emancipation Proclamation… We have come far and we have far to go, but today is a day of celebration. It is not only a day of pride. It is also a day for us to reaffirm and rededicate ourselves to action." Their sentiments both embody the significance of Juneteenth, and the Biden Administration’s continued devotion towards racial justice and equality.
The Juneteenth celebrations of 2021 will be vibrant across the country, as communities eat barbeque together, shoot fireworks, sip on red drinks (symbolizing the blood shed by African Americans) or shop at black-owned businesses. Some families and communities will even gather and celebrate in online video chats due to Covid-19. Overall, Juneteenth celebrations are meant to foster feelings of “closeness and love” and the freedom “in the right to be with people you love,” says American author Attica Locke. Kenneth Timmons, another African American, told the New York Times that “My co-workers know why I’m off [work], I tell them I don’t work Juneteenth. I don’t work on my Independence Day”
Still, the holiday faces some backlash from (mostly Republican) politicians. One Republican representative from South Carolina, Ralph Norman, voted against the creation of Juneteenth as a federal holiday. He argued that “There’s one fourth of July. There’s one birthday… Independence Day is Fourth of July. I had a lot of negativity on it. But this [creating Juneteenth] was an easy ‘no’ vote... How many holidays do we want? Are we going to do one for the Native American Indians? I mean, where does it stop?”
But, Mr. Norman does not acknowledge that for many Black Americans like Mr. Timmons, the 4th of July does not represent independence. It took another 91 years, until June 19, 1865, before the promise “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness” was fulfilled (or closer to being fulfilled) for Black Americans.
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