In thinking about June 19th in Galveston, Texas 1865, when enslaved people received the word that they were free. I wonder how they felt finding out that they had been free two and a half years after the Emancipation Proclamation had taken effect. I think about the time it took for more than 250,000 enslaved Texans to experience what some 3 million other formerly enslaved Americans already had.

Although Texan planters had long known the Civil War was over, they had hoped to get more harvest out of their human property. In this country, hiding history has always been about maintaining control, denying concession, and delaying justice.

Commemorating Juneteenth is appropriate. It marks the end of race-based chattel slavery, a massive economic system that enriched white slaveholders at the expense of Black laborers. It also took the bloodiest war, the Civil War, to finally abolish slavery. It is therefore, appropriate to annually acknowledge one of the most important events in U.S. history.