Happy Juneteenth Freedom Day ... But The March Goes On

This particular National holiday’s origin story began Galveston, Texas, which was at that time the western-most area of the country, when Union soldiers arrived to tell enslaved Black Americans of their Emancipation on June 19, 1865.

Now, those enslaved people had technically already been freed two-and-a-half years earlier when President Abraham Lincoln issued the Emancipation Proclamation, but slaveholders in Texas kept the information to themselves, extending the period of violent exploitation of enslaved African Americans.

But in 1865 the news spread: freedom, and the following year, in 1866, a celebration was had in Texas on that same date, June 19th … Juneteenth … to finally recognize freedom from slavery in the United States.

Of course, here we are in 2026, one-hundred-sixty years later, and we know Black Americans still aren’t entirely free; think of George Floyd and Trayvon Martin and Tamir Rice and Eric Garner and Breonna Taylor and Michael Brown and Freddie Gray and on and on we could go … think of the Supreme Court gutting the Voting Rights Act and the current regime ending DEI—Diversity, Equity and Inclusion—in government.

We still have much work to do to free all Americans, of every race and color and gender and sexual orientation.

We need to free People of Color from the abuses of police and the criminal justice system and some in our own government that work to deny them the right to vote.

We need to free Women from having the government control their bodies.

We need to free Educators to teach American history, all of it, even the ugliest parts; every step forward and every step back in American history.

We need to free Parents to be able to raise their own children as they see fit; to let their children read the books of their choosing; to let the parents make healthcare choices for their own children.

We need to free our Trans Brothers and Sisters to live their lives as they identify; to be fully themselves, to be respected by all of us.

We need to free the LGBTQ+ population from continued harassment and violence by rightwing agitators and politicians trying to turn the clock back to the closet.

We are, none of us, free, until we are all free, and there is still work to be done. 

Juneteenth was signed into law as a federal holiday by President Joe Biden on June 17, 2021.

In 2025, the current president, vowed to end diversity, equity and inclusion in government and there was confusion about whether Juneteenth would stay on the federal calendar. That all changed when the current president dropped Juneteenth and Martin Luther King Jr. Day from a list of days people can access national parks for free though he added his own birthday to the list.

So, celebrate Juneteenth, not matter what this regime says; recognize the meaning and the history, American history of this day.

Happy Juneteenth!