The Importance of Juneteenth: A Celebration of Freedom and Reflection

As we navigate through our busy lives and the many holidays that come and go, Juneteenth stands out as a significant day of remembrance and celebration. It is not something that was included in the textbooks during my grade school years. I have only known about it for 15 years. While it marks a pivotal moment in American history with the emancipation of enslaved African Americans in the United States, there is so much about our history and the experiences of people who looked like me that I don’t know about.

I am a Descendant of Slaves

I have been fortunate to travel to many places, but my DNA has traveled so much further. It reads like a map crafted in joy and pain – Nigeria, Benin & Togo, Cameroon, Congo & Western Bantu Peoples, England & Northwestern Europe, Senegal, Ivory Coast & Ghana, Ireland, Mali, Germanic Europe, France, Wales, and Scotland. The only thing that is clear beyond anything else is that I am a descendant of slaves.

The Transatlantic slave trade lasted for 400 years. To say that it was a way of life is an understatement. Slavery lasted in the United States for 250 years. It is very sobering to me when I imagine men and women being taken from their families, stripped of their belongings, including their clothing only to wait for the ships to come in to be sold. Then once aboard those ships for the 3-month voyage, they were loaded in the cargo hold which was only five feet tall by 20 feet wide. They were allowed outside once a week for sunlight. Otherwise, this was their home filled with vomit from being seasick and feces from it also being their bathroom. Those who became ill were thrown overboard as damaged. Watch the Documentary.

Let’s Have the Real Talk

The U.S. and many other countries have struggled with acknowledging its past. Learning how barbaric and violent it was, I understand. However, what I struggle with is not where we have been, it’s where we are and where we seem to be going as a civilization of people. We all see it: the continuous attacks on DEI (diversity, equity, and inclusion), the abolition of Affirmative Action in college admissions (which pales in comparison to legacy admissions), the attack on Black Lives Matter (simply because of a small handful of bad actors), the inequity many Black professionals face in the workplace (creating wealth gaps for generations to come), the inconsistencies in our justice and healthcare systems, the removal of books from libraries, the attack and weaponization of simple words like "woke" and "critical race theory," the rebirth and rewrite of Black history where we are being told that slavery taught useful skills (as if these men and women had no life before being taken from their homes and families), the constant attack on voting rights in lower-income communities, and the continuation around unfair housing.

Juneteenth

The reason outsourcing became popular was due to the rising cost of labor and its impact on profits. Some companies may look at AI with the same appeal. So, imagine a slave owner pays only $60 per slave(human being) and gets to work them for the rest of their lives. If the slaves had children, they were property to keep or sell. Once importing slaves became illegal, slave owners did what we would expect when the threat of profits and wealth was at stake – they created slave breeding farms. Learn More About Slave Breeding.

As with any business, it was impractical to just let those profits go without a fight – it was "one" of the reasons for the Civil War. I suspect that the South wanting to secede from the Union had a lot to do with things. Once slaves were emancipated in 1863, it was not logical that every state would comply, which is why Texas decided to hold on to 250,000 enslaved people until they were forced to free them in June of 1865 (Juneteenth). To be clear, emancipation does not mean that everything became well with the universe and that Black people went on to thrive and survive. The atrocities of slavery have had a stronghold on decisions in our country for some time. Decisions that have made the road to freedom dicey and uncertain. Keep in mind that Brown vs Board of Education happened almost 90 years after Emancipation, and Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr was assassinated 14 years after that. George Floyd's murder came 155 years after Emancipation. The Timeline of Black History.

The Reality

So, why has it consistently been more difficult for Black Americans to thrive? The answer is quite easy to understand – anger, fear, and superiority.

If you were forced to give up something that you felt was valuable and that you fundamentally believed that owning was your right, which emotion would it incite?

If for generations, you’ve been taught that you were superior and then had to dine with, swim, shop, work, worship (by the way Churches continued segregation long after schools were desegregated) and go to the same schools, which emotion would it incite?

Then if there was the off chance that some on each side could love each other to start a family, mixing what you believed was a superior bloodline with an inferior one, which emotion would it incite?

We cannot ignore the behavior that anger, fear, and superiority drove then, and continue to drive in our society. It does not matter if it is fueled by misinformation or the lack of education - it’s generational - it’s systemic - and can only be eradicated by shining a light on it wherever we see it.

A Celebration of Freedom

?For Black people, Juneteenth is a celebration of resilience, culture, and the unyielding spirit that allowed us to survive the voyage, withstand the pain, and still hold our heads up and smile, singing how we’ve overcome. For those in power and positions of influence, with the ability to bring about meaningful, measurable, and lifelong changes, it’s a reminder that your bravery does not go unnoticed, you become part of Black history, which is American history.

There are no requirements for how you should honor or celebrate Juneteenth. My only ask is that you take a moment, wherever you are around the world, and find a place to yell out – We Can Do It Together! Those are the videos that bring me the most joy and give me the most hope for a better future.

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Happy Juneteenth!