We Are Not Free, Until We Are All Free
African-Americans across the United States have been honoring Juneteenth since the very beginning. It’s Freedom Day. Marking the day on June 19,1865 where enslaved people in westernmost Texas finally learned of their freedom, over two years after the Emancipation Proclamation was signed.
It’s not surprising there are many people in the US who have never heard of the day or had learned the history. It has always been a holiday quietly recognized in our own communities and culture. The Juneteenth cookout, small town parades, the “Happy Juneteenth sis…you taking off work?” text messages were all amongst ourselves as Black people. Now here we are in 2021...it’s officially a federal holiday and everyone is reaching for the cliff notes on American history.
Somehow we forget that slavery was legal and fundamental to this country’s existence. Laws were in place to ensure slavery thrived. Laws were enacted to subjugate and dehumanize Africans. It was truly an integrated way of being and culture of this country for hundreds of years. What does that do to the heart of a society? How does this society have its reckoning and heal? The abolition of slavery and the Thirteenth Amendment certainly did not mean forgetting or forgiving.
In fact, slavery existed in the US as late as the 1960s. Seems unfathomable to understand how that can happen in modern times. Yet, it is a reminder of how vast and how deeply dark some corners of this country can be. As recent as 2019, a South Carolina man was convicted of keeping a Black man as a slave for most of his life.
The celebration of Juneteenth amongst African-Americans is truly an homage to our ancestors. Recognition of their struggle, strength, resilience, survival, and pain. Holding on for the shackles to break, in the far reaches of Texas. We celebrate because we know we are not free, until we are all free. And much of this energy we still call upon until this day. Facing the realities of our present day police violence, mass incarceration, pay inequity, and a dozen more systemic barriers, it is clear and without any doubt we still have a ways to go for our true freedom. 2020 made the world face that truth.
Now with Juneteenth being officially recognized as a federal holiday, I question what this symbolic gesture is supposed to do for African-Americans. It doesn’t alleviate the continued pain, horrors, and struggle. And I pray this new federal designation of Juneteenth doesn’t fall into the trap of commodification and diminishment of something very deeply uniquely ours. African-Americans had already been celebrating Juneteenth and drawing strength and community from it. Centuries later, the work to ensure our freedoms continue because we are not free until we are all free, in all the ways a (wo)man is humanly meant to be free.
