Thoughts On Juneteenth

   Today is the celebration of Juneteenth, or Emancipation Day, our newest American holiday.
    Minted just one year ago by President Biden. Juneteenth commemorates June 19, 1865, the day that slavery was finally abolished in the United States.
      And well a national holiday Juneteenth should be, a day to be celebrated not just by Black Americans, but by all Americans. As put forth by Duke University professor of African American studies Mark Anthony Neal, ​

...we should "think of Juneteenth and Independence Day as kind of bookends to this idea of American democracy and freedom.”
        I for one like the image of the two days as being seasonal celebratory bookends: First Emancipation Day, then two weeks later Independence Day. 
          And yet, when you think about it, there is something problematic about Juneteenth as a holiday. Because, unlike the Fourth of July, which evokes patriotic images of American bravery and heroism in the fight for freedom,

...culminating in the birth of our nation and our Declaration of Independence, which guarantees all Americans their endowed right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness,

...Juneteenth cannot but evoke different images, images of what it was that those who were emancipated, either by Abraham Lincoln's proclamation in 1863 or by Union Army General Gordon Granger's announcement in Texas in 1865, were emancipated from.
     No images of heroism, but of kidnapped men, women, and children taken away from their homes, families, and countries by traffickers in human flesh.

      Images of generation after generation of humans enslaved from their birth to their death, 

...​their bodies, the bodies of their children, of their parents, of anyone they might love or cherish, all those bodies the property of an owner who could use, abuse, or sell them as they wanted.

  When juxtaposed with the Fourth of July, Juneteenth shows this truth to be self-evident: that our country was not, in fact founded on the lofty premise that all men were created equal, ​

...or that they were endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights

...or that among these were Life, Liberty and the pursuit of happiness.

       In truth, our country's foundation on slavery and the legacy it left behind is something that we, as a nation, have yet to come to terms with.
       But Juneteenth is a start.

Reference:
https://www.nytimes.com/2022/06/18/us/juneteenth-states-paid-holiday.html