Skip to main content

Why do we celebrate Juneteenth?

A Portmanteau of June and Nineteenth, Juneteenth is the oldest celebration of the end of slavery in the United States. It commemorates the day that Federal Troops took control of Galveston, TX and informed the enslaved there that they were free. Though this event took place two and a half years after they were formally freed by the signing of the  Emancipation Proclamation, slaves were not informed by their masters in order to gain illegal as well as immoral labor from them.   Once the freed slaves heard the news many left to seek opportunities in the north or look for family in neighboring states but all slaves rejoiced. 


Celebrations and commemorations began the next year in 1866. “Jubilee Day,” as Juneteenth was known then, focused on community celebrations in church and political rallies for enfranchisement.  As many freedmen were barred from public and segregated places such as parks, Black Americans had to purchase their own land in order to celebrate. Houston’s Emancipation Park is one such location. By 1890 Juneteeth had found the name we know it as and spread in popularity across the south. 


As time went on, cultural and economic forces caused Juneteenth to become less popular and harder to celebrate. Black Americans found it hard to get the day off and most Americans were not taught the history of how and when the last slaves in America were freed. However, the civil rights movement of the 50s and 60s allowed for a resurgence in popularity in celebrations. Events like the Poor People's March inspired many Americans to celebrate Juneteenth in places that never celebrated before such as two large celebrations in Milwaukee and Minneapolis.  Today 47 states celebrate Juneteenth as a state holiday and there is significant push to make it a federal holiday. 


Delaware first officially recognized Juneteenth in 2000. Today’s celebrations of Juneteenth range from rodeos to cookouts to lectures on or displays of African American Art and Culture. Last year marked the triumphant return of a 25 year old festival to Christina Park in Wilmington. This year the following celebrations and observances are planned.  

If you'd like to learn more about Juneteenth, here are some resources:

Labels

Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Left, Right and Center: What is the Political Ideological Spectrum?

You have probably heard a number of terms having to do with the political spectrum. From political quizzes charting your ideology, to debates in Congress, to news featuring Antifa, there seems to be a need for a handy heuristic to solve the problems of partisan politics. Enter the Left-Right political spectrum. But before we dive into the subject a warning: it is important to remember that human beings are complicated and contradictory animals that cannot be mapped on anything as simple as a political spectrum , let alone one with a single axis. Furthermore, there are plenty of voices that would argue that it is an outdated or overly simplistic idea.   Nevertheless, we will take a look at the Left-Right Spectrum, its history, its uses, and its complications in order to make more sense of this political moment and the partisan groups that inhabit it.   Why Right and Left?  The use of the terms left and right date back to the French Revolution. In 1789, the National A...
Post a Comment
Read more

Is there more to life than XX and XY? Getting past the sexual binary

Transgender, nonbinary, intersex, and other queer individuals have more visibility today than ever. While many people have learned a lot about these communities and have accepted their identities, many people remain confused, or are hostile toward the idea of a person feeling that they were assigned the wrong sex at birth, or feeling they don’t belong to either sex. How can a person be assigned the wrong sex? How can there be anything other than male and female sexes? Most of us learned in school that there are two biological sexes, and they are controlled by two chromosomes X and Y. If a person has XX they will be female, and XY will be male. You may have even learned that it is the presence of the Y chromosome that makes someone male, so someone with an extra sex chromosome XXY would still be male. Unfortunately, like so many other things you learned in school, it turns out that your teachers did not tell you the whole story. Biological sex is actually a really complex subject, there...
Post a Comment
Read more

How are sex and gender different? (And why gender reveal parties are problematic)

  **This is a topic that is challenging to write about because the language surrounding it is evolving so quickly. This is just a very broad overview, and it is possible this information may be dated by the time you are reading it. In recent years there has been a distinct uptick in the popularity of gender reveal parties. At these parties expectant parents, family members, and friends find out the “gender” of the baby that is on the way. If you haven’t been invited to one yourself, you have probably seen some of the news stories of gender reveal parties gone wrong , most famously the party that led to the Sawmill Fire in Arizona in 2017. Aside from the potential dangers of using explosives at a family gathering, gender reveal parties have prompted discussion because a baby’s gender can’t be revealed before it’s born, and even its sex is not necessarily wholly represented in an ultrasound image.  In our day-to-day lives people often use the terms sex and gender interchangeab...
Post a Comment
Read more