Juneteenth meaning

2022 - 6 - 19

Juneteenth is at risk of losing its meaning (Axios)

The holiday is meant to commemorate emancipation from slavery.

Below you'll find a selection of lessons. What they're saying: "When you live in a society like ours, there's always the danger that these sorts of holidays will be absorbed into a kind of market, consumer-based. Why it matters: Juneteenth became a federal holiday just last year. - "You don't just want to commercialize it. without the holiday, those two different events wouldn't have happened," Glaude said. Why it matters: Because Juneteenth is not recognized as a holiday in a majority of states, many state employees across the country are not allowed to take a paid vacation day to observe the holiday, which celebrates the end of slavery in the U.S.

Opinion | What Celebrating Juneteenth Means to Me, as a Black Texan (The New York Times)

That June 19 in 1865, the day we now celebrate as a nation, was the day that Black Texans officially received some of the stalest news in American history.

The Times is committed to publishing a diversity of letters to the editor. She’d heard the testimonies of those who’d had to navigate both the tragedy of slavery and the terror of emancipation. I regret not asking more questions about our family, about her life in Pelham. As more folks in Clarice’s generation pass away, we are losing the final physical links to those who know our history — who are our history. Gen. Joseph Jones Reynolds, a commander of the Department of Texas during Reconstruction, commented in 1868, “The murder of Negroes is so common as to render it impossible to keep an accurate account of them.” The Equal Justice Initiative has tried, reporting that more than 2,000 Black women, men and children were victims of racial terrorist lynchings during Reconstruction, which lasted from 1865 to 1877. I was born in Texas, as were my parents and most of my kin, all the way back to at least the 19th century, when some of them were enslaved. We can do no better this Juneteenth than to spend time with the elders who are still with us. Most of all, I think of how each year, my cousin Rhodia Fay would rise before our congregation and recite James Weldon Johnson’s “The Crucifixion” a long dramatic poem detailing Christ’s murder. I don’t even have to explain the absurdity of the F.B.I. wishing us all a happy Martin Luther King’s Birthday. I was raised an evangelical Christian and sometimes think of all those Easter Sundays spent in church. If we got upset about some Juneteenth ice cream, imagine how those roughly 250,000 enslaved Texans must have felt when they found out they had been the victims of horrendous overtime fraud. Then I asked myself, how exactly should the whole nation celebrate a day like this? “Lemme know when the reparations check arrives.”

On this Juneteenth, watch Toni Morrison talk about the meaning of ... (Mother Jones)

June 19 marks the day that Major General Gordon Granger rode into Galveston, Texas, in 1865 and announced the end of the Civil War and the end of slavery. It ...

Both exaggerations I find deplorable, but my way is to push anything out to the edge, to see of what it is really made, so that Sula would be ‘a free woman.'” In lieu of stocking up on Walmart’s Juneteenth-themed ice cream, I’d like to offer this 1978 recording of legendary author Toni Morrison, who at the time was a single mom who had just published her third novel, Song of Solomon. It had taken two and a half years for news of President Abraham Lincoln’s Emancipation Proclamation, which legally freed enslaved people, to reach Galveston; it took 156 additional years for the US government to declare Juneteenth a federal holiday in this country, even though Black communities had celebrated the day for a century and a half.

Juneteenth flag meaning: Creator explains the symbols and origins (INSIDER)

The flag features stars and an arc, representing different aspects of Black emancipation. Many people still prefer to fly the Pan-African Flag, too.

Both flags are symbols of "pride and freedom" for Black Americans, but serve different purposes. So I thought it was important that the colors portray red, white and blue which we see in the American flag." It also represents a "new beginning" for the African American people who were freed in Galveston, per CNN. Using the same colors as the Star-Spangled Banner is a reminder that enslaved Black Americans were first and foremost American, he said. The flag, which has been revised twice since then, features three symbols in red, white, and blue, and the words: "June 19, 1865." While Juneteenth has been celebrated since 1866, it was only recognized as a federal holiday in June 2021.

Juneteenth was finally recognized as a federal holiday. Then came ... (NBC News)

Juneteenth may be the country's newest federal holiday, but for many Black Americans, June 19 has long been associated with homegrown community celebrations ...

A coalition of organizations are demanding that Biden create a federal commission by executive order to study reparations and the long-term effects of slavery. Now that it's a federal holiday, part of figuring out how to mark the day as a nation comes with educating the public about it. Are you giving decision making power to people who are representative of the community that this holiday is meant to honor?” “African Americans have always used these moments of memory to think about where the community has come from and what we’re pursuing and striving toward, as well as taking the time to pass down history and culture,” she said last year. The move prompted questions about who can even own the idea of Juneteenth, and the appropriateness of corporations cashing in on what could be considered a bittersweet holiday, commemorating the end of enslavement and the beginning of a generations-long struggle for civil rights. Many were angry to see the trademarked Juneteenth ice cream on shelves, developed with the help of a corporation that creates artificial flavors, and a children’s museum apologized after its Juneteenth menu included a watermelon salad.

Significance of Juneteenth in Ohio (Spectrum News 1)

OHIO — While many across the country are celebrating Juneteenth, the holiday has special significance in Ohio when it comes to the freedom of slaves.

“Texas was a part of those Confederate States. So adhering to a president that they did not acknowledge or pledge any allegiance did not impact them in that way,” Miller said. “But what it did was, it incentivized those who were enslaved to not only to fight vigorously for their own freedom but also to bear arms in that room to participate as Union forces.” That includes understanding that even though the Emancipation Proclamation was signed in 1863, there was a war going on between the United States and the Confederate States of America.

April Sims: What Juneteenth means to me (thestand.org)

TACOMA (June 19, 2022) — Washington will recognize Juneteenth as an official State holiday for the first time this year. This increased recognition of Freedom ...

So he moved the family to Seattle, where he got a job as a janitor at a department store represented by the Teamsters, and for the first time in his life, he had both the racial and economic justice that he had so fiercely sought. We are seeing a resurgence of worker organizing across the United States. One thousand petitions for union recognition have been filed with the NLRB as of May 31; we haven’t hit that 1k mark this early in the year since 2010. So he migrated to Washington, where he got a job at the Hanford nuclear plant in Pasco, and for the first time in his life, earned a fair day’s pay for a hard day’s work. Black labor built the country we live in; we’ve put in 400 years of sweat equity that continues today. But my grandfather dreamt of a better life, not just for him, but for his children and his children’s children. Juneteenth is a celebration of freedom and Black resilience.