Juneteenth 2021
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“When you are Black in America, how do you celebrate progress?” the historian Kellie Carter Jackson asks in a new piece today.
Juneteenth is officially America’s newest federal holiday. But the push to broaden and formalize the celebration threatens to overshadow an ongoing war on the country’s memory, Jackson writes:
“The proliferation of Juneteenth events is taking place at the same time as the banning of critical race theory and curricula focused on slavery’s lasting effects. It is impossible to celebrate Juneteenth and simultaneously deny the teaching of America’s foundational legacy.”
Many businesses are closed today in observance of the holiday. But such action will just be performative if it’s not followed by real reform, Jackson, who teaches at Wellesley College, argued last year.
Juneteenth celebrates a delayed liberation, marking the day that news of the Emancipation Proclamation belatedly reached Texas. But Black Americans have always found, and continue to find, ways to self-liberate, Daina Ramey Berry, the chair of the history department at the University of Texas at Austin, reminds us:
“What we acknowledge this Juneteenth must be about more than what was given. It must be about what had already been claimed.”
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ways this week
Observance, 2021
New York (CNN Business)Major corporations are celebrating Juneteenth in unique ways this week.
The annual June 19 tradition, which falls on Saturday this year, commemorates the day in 1865 when former American slaves in Galveston, Texas, were finally informed of President Abraham Lincoln’s January 1, 1863, Emancipation Proclamation and the end of the Civil War.
It took Union troops more than two years to finish travel throughout the southern United States to inform all the former slaves of Lincoln’s executive order. The December 6, 1865, ratification of the 13th Amendment made slavery illegal throughout the US “except as a punishment for crime.”
African Americans have been celebrating Juneteenth as their own Independence Day since the late 19th century, according to the National Juneteenth Observance Foundation, but the holiday gained mainstream recognition and took on more significance in the business world in the aftermath of the George Floyd tragedy a year ago.
The racial reckoning that erupted around the globe following Floyd’s murder by a former police officer compelled many Fortune 500 companies to add Juneteenth to their calendars for the first time while also committing billions of dollars to initiatives designed to combat institutional racism.
Many cities and states across the country also introduced bills and passed laws in recognition of Juneteenth. Earlier this week, federal lawmakers in the Senate and the House passed bills that would make Juneteenth an official federal holiday. The move brings the yearly celebration a step closer to becoming the first national holiday issued by the US government since President Ronald Reagan signed a law adding Martin Luther King Jr. Day as a federal holiday in 1983