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With action in the Maine Legislature and Congress, Juneteenth was declared a state and federal holiday in 2021. We applaud the effort to bring more recognition to the diverse history of the United States, including events too long overlooked by our “official” history. However, it is important to remember that setting aside a holiday is no substitute for substantive action to reduce widespread racial disparities that continue to harm Black Americans.
Juneteenth is a 157-year-old holiday, yet too few Americans have been familiar with the celebration that loosely marks the end of slavery in the United States.
The holiday gets its name from June 19, 1865, the day the Union army arrived in Galveston, Texas, to announce that all African-American slaves in the state were free in accordance with President Abraham Lincoln’s Emancipation Proclamation, which was issued nearly three years earlier. Texas was the last state in the Confederacy to receive word that the Civil War was over and that slavery had been abolished.
Maine House Speaker Rachel Talbot Ross, the first Black woman to hold that office, sponsored the 2021 legislation that made Juneteenth an official state holiday. She discussed its significance in committee testimony at the time.
“The Juneteenth holiday does not celebrate one day in just one place, but instead it recognizes the harsh experiences of all those who were enslaved. The mothers, fathers, children and siblings who toiled in Maine’s soil and built Maine’s economy without enjoying their own freedom,” Talbot Ross said, having highlighted Maine’s often overlooked but nevertheless real historic role in slavery. “These experiences are documented in our church records, in court cases and in the records of our own Maine State Archives. This is a part of history for all our communities and it is time that we recognize it completely.”
We must overcome defensiveness to recognize and rectify difficult historical truths. We have a lot of work to do to successfully tackle the issues of today together.
Despite progress, Black Americans have a shorter life expectancy than their white peers and that Black mothers are at a much higher risk of dying during pregnancy or after childbirth. Black Americans continue to face a disproportionate amount of police violence in this country.
Black Americans are paid less than their white counterparts. They are more likely to live in poverty, in part because of racist policies that limited their access to homeownership, the largest building block of wealth in America.
Black Americans are less likely to have a college degree than white Americans, in part because of decades of legacy admissions that favor white applicants and policies that actively excluded people of color from American colleges.
When Black Americans — or any group of Americans — are left out of our nation’s progress, it is bad for all of us. So, this Juneteenth, participate in one of the many celebratory and informative events that will be held statewide. But also commit to working to end the racial injustices that have long been a part of America’s history.
