Today is Juneteenth. Juneteenth is about how some of the last, formerly, "Legally," enslaved people within the United States were freed on this day in 1865 when troops forced slave owners in Texas to free their human beings from illegal ownership. It has existed for some time as a holiday, but became a Federal holiday in 2021, when President Joe Biden signed the Juneteenth National Independence Day Act into law. America has had quite some time to observe and reckon with its disturbing legacy of enslavement, yet many still choose to try to frame slavery as if it were, "Not that bad," as opposed to a stain on our Nation's history.
Having a day to commemorate the end of slavery as we knew it (the idea of how prisoners are treated as slaves within the modern-day prison industrial complex is a lengthy post for another time) is a wonderful thing. A way to celebrate the end of something dark and disturbing as our nation inched a little closer to, "Liberty and justice, for all." America is still quite far from actually achieving such a lofty goal, but it remains a work in progress--and there is a lot of work to be done.
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