Juneteenth: The Celebration Of Black Culture And Freedom.
Juneteenth is a day of celebration, freedom, hope, and a new chapter. Juneteenth derives from blending “June” and “nineteenth,” celebrating the day in 1865 when enslaved African Americans in Galveston, Texas, learned they were free two and a half years after the Emancipation Proclamation. To understand more about Juneteenth, knowing about the Emancipation Proclamation is essential. On January 1st, 1963, President Abraham Lincoln issued an executive order declaring that all enslaved people in Confederate states “shall be then, thenceforward, and forever free.” Union soldiers, the majority being black, marched across the South reading copies of the Emancipation Proclamation, spreading the news of freedom in the Confederate States. The ThirteenthAmendment ended slavery throughout the United States. The newly freed African Americans in Texas began to celebrate June 19 as “Juneteenth,”
The Struggles After Freedom
Following the independence of African Americans, life was not easy; facing discrimination, even being free, Freedom did not bring equality. African Americans would still have to fight for voting rights, which were met with resistance, especially in the South. Things like the Jim Crow laws, white supremacist hate groups like the Ku Klux Klan, black codes, and many more. Black people also had to find shelter, racial segregation, families being separated, financial hardships, and the system not being in their favor. Limited black people from correctly prospering after their newfound freedom. Despite these hardships, Juneteenth remained an essential occasion for African American communities. In the early 20th century, Juneteenth celebrations started fading due to systematic oppression and economic hardships during the great depression. The civil rights movements of the 1950s and 1960s made people gain interest in the holiday again because, even after years, black people still have to fight for equality. In the second half of the 20th century, Juneteenth started to gain more widespread attention. In 1980, Texas became the first state to declare it a state holiday. As time passed, more states began recognizing Juneteenth, with nationwide celebrations involving parades, concerts, food, and readings of the Emancipation Proclamation. The holiday became a moment not just as a celebration but as a moment of recognizing the hard work and fight to get to where we are today.
The Road To a Federal Holiday
The fight to make Juneteenth a federal holiday gained momentum in the past few years due to the same patterns being repeated with events like the case of Trayvon Martin, Breonna Taylor, the murder of George Floyd in 2020, Michael Brown, and the list goes on. These events highlighted the racial injustice still happening in the United States. The protests over George Floyd's murder sparked nationwide conversations on Juneteenth and discussions about how the system needs to be fixed. Amid societal reckoning, government agencies, schools, and corporate America began recognizing Juneteenth as a formal holiday. A diverse group of activists led the effort to make Juneteenth a national holiday, including 94-year-old Opal Lee, the "Grandmother of Juneteenth”. When President Joe Biden signed the Juneteenth National Independence Day Act into law in June 2021, everyone who had fought in the slave rebellions, the civil rights activists, and present-day activists were rewarded for the fight to get here. The bill was approved, making Juneteenth the first new federal holiday since Martin Luther King Jr. Day was created in 1983.