5SR - June 19, 2023

Dr. Kate is a professor at the University of New Hampshire and the National Director of Post-Secondary Pathways at BUILD.org. She researches critical race theory, white identity formation, critical whiteness studies, and institutional white supremacy. She has two decently adorable red-headed children, a thing for scotch, and an intense love for a gallery wall. She organizes her bookshelf in rainbow order and cries without fail during Moana

The Story We’ve Been Told About Juneteenth Is Wrong (Texas Monthly)

Dr. Joseph writes about his own childhood memories of the commemoration of Juneteenth, and how that understanding of the holiday became more nuanced and complex as he became a historian and an academic.

In particular, he describes the experience of contradiction in his celebration of Juneteenth - celebrating freedom from enslavement whilst also wrestling with the knowledge that today, Black Americans are still not free.

The Gentrification of Juneteenth (Boston Globe)

Graham writes “In 2021, Congress voted overwhelmingly to make Juneteenth the first new federal holiday in nearly 40 years. Many also recognized that with such a designation, Juneteenth could be drained of its Black specificity as a means to avoid deeper conversations about slavery and how this nation has yet to fully address the ongoing harms of its foundational sin.”

In this newsletter, Graham draws attention to the fact that with the widespread adoption of celebrating Juneteenth, the racialized origins of the holiday have been obscured to degrees ranging from ‘whitewashing’ to ‘total erasure’... all under the guise of ‘unity’.

Juneteenth Special: Historian Clint Smith on Reckoning with the History of Slavery Across America (Democracy Now)

My understanding of Juneteenth as a holiday was deepened by Clint Smith’s incredible book How the Word Is Passed: A Reckoning With the History of Slavery Across America. In it, he explores the legacy of Juneteenth by visiting Galveston, TX, the site where the last enslaved people in the United States were freed by Union general Granger, two years after the end of the Civil War.

In this interview, Clint Smith discusses the ‘marathon of cognitive dissonance’ that many Black Americans are experiencing today where, on one hand, there’s been a widespread popularization of Juneteenth across the country, which is also matched against significant backlash following the Racial Reckoning of 2020- the cognitive dissonance of a historical celebration of Black freedom alongside story after story of victims who suffer today under deeply entrenched systemic racism.

Opal Lee (BlackPast)

Opal Lee is 96 years old and widely credited with being “the mother of Juneteenth”. After surviving racialized violence and oppression while growing up in Texas, she became an educator and a community activist. In 2016, she devoted her energy to ensuring that the holiday of Juneteenth would become nationally recognized.

She began a walking campaign that commemorated the 2.5 years following the signing of the Emancipation Proclamation that it took for enslaved people in Galveston TX to be freed. After five years of her walking campaign, Juneteenth was recognized as a national holiday in 2021.

How White People Can Celebrate Juneteenth (Publication)

As a white woman, I wrestle with the question of how to acknowledge and commemorate celebrations and holidays that, frankly speaking, aren’t ‘for’ me. This article gave me a lot of food for thought and some really important advice for how to spend the day.

Littlejohn says it short and sweet here: “If you want to share in the celebration, you have to be part of the work.” I plan to commemorate Juneteenth in the following ways: reading books to my kids about the specific holiday of Juneteenth; investing in mutual aid; donating the equivalent of my day’s work wages to an organization that specifically uplifts and supports Black Americans (my job gives us the holiday off); volunteering my time and energy for an organization that’s committed to racial justice (Taproot has a great list of opportunities here: Tap Root Foundation.)