JUNETEENTH
A day spent commemorating the end of slavery in the United States.
By Charlotte Samaroo
The holiday was first celebrated in Texas, on June 19, 1866. This date marked the first anniversary of the day African Americans learned of the Emancipation Proclamation; a document issued by President Abraham Lincoln supposedly written to free all enslaved people in the Confederacy. Regardless of such a document coming about, the slaves themselves did not actually learn of its existence until 2 years later.
Though many may believe that the proclamation directly put an end to American slavery, it actually was not intended to do so. Northern states were not required to end the practice of enslavement as it was considered legal, and free black northerners were not permitted the right to American citizenship. In the Southern states, confederate citizens did not acknowledge Lincoln’s authority, therefore they deferred when given the incentive to return to the union before January 1st. Returning to the Union before the 1st would mean the state would not have to make slavery illegal, if refused then as of January 1st the states enslaved people would be declared free. As a result, no states returned when presented with the choice. Those enslaved in the South were thus liberated and granted freedom by force either by their own means or intervention by Union forces.
By the time the enslaved people in Texas learned of the proclamation the civil war was almost at an end, and all confederate forces surrendered by late spring/ early summer. The months that proceeded would require all states to adhere to the Thirteenth amendment, which officially abolished slavery everywhere in the U.S.
Juneteenth was initially celebrated with groups coming together in prayer by singing spirituals and dressing in new clothing, symbolic of newfound freedom. As time progressed African Americans celebrated Juneteenth in other states making it an annual tradition. See some further reading for adult & children below…
Children’s Further Reading
All Different Now
by Angela Johnson
“Through the eyes of one little girl, All Different Now tells the story of the first Juneteenth, the day freedom finally came to the last of the slaves in the South. Since then, the observance of June 19 as African American Emancipation Day has spread across the United States and beyond. This stunning picture book includes notes from the author and illustrator, a timeline of important dates, and a glossary of relevant terms.”
Juneteenth
By Opal Lee
An engaging way to introduce the history of slavery and freedom to children in words they can understand. Ms. Opal highlights the celebration of Juneteenth and the importance of commemorating this milestone all across America.
Juneteenth; For Mazie
by Floyd Cooper
“Mazie is ready to celebrate liberty. She is ready to celebrate freedom. She is ready to celebrate a great day in American history. The day her ancestors were no longer slaves. Mazie remembers the struggles and the triumph, as she gets ready to celebrate Juneteenth.”
Adults Further Reading
by Ralph Ellison
“Tell me what happened while there’s still time,” demands the dying Senator Adam Sunraider to the itinerate Negro preacher whom he calls Daddy Hickman. As a young man, Sunraider was Bliss, an orphan taken in by Hickman and raised to be a preacher like himself. Bliss’s history encompasses the joys of young southern boyhood; bucolic days as a filmmaker, lovemaking in a field in the Oklahoma sun. And behind it all lies a mystery: how did this chosen child become the become the man who would deny everything to achieve his goals? Brilliantly crafted, moving, wise, Juneteenth is the work of an American master.”
Make it stand out
Four Hundred Souls
by Ibram X. Kendi and Keisha N. Blain
“A chorus of extraordinary voices tells the epic story of the four-hundred-year journey of African Americans from 1619 to the present—edited by Ibram X. Kendi, author of How to Be an Antiracist, and Keisha N. Blain, author of Set the World on Fire. This is a history that illuminates our past and gives us new ways of thinking about our future, written by the most vital and essential voices of our present.”
by Henry Louis Gates, Jr.
“The abolition of slavery in the aftermath of the Civil War is a familiar story, as is the civil rights revolution that transformed the nation after World War II. But the century in between remains a mystery: if emancipation sparked “a new birth of freedom” in Lincoln’s America, why was it necessary to march in Martin Luther King Jr.’s America? In this new book, Henry Louis Gates Jr., one of our leading chroniclers of the African-American experience, seeks to answer that question in a history that moves from the Reconstruction Era to the “nadir” of the African-American experience under Jim Crow, through to World War I and the Harlem Renaissance.”
by James Baldwin
A national bestseller when it first appeared in 1963, The Fire Next Time galvanized the nation and gave passionate voice to the emerging civil rights movement. At once a powerful evocation of James Baldwin’s early life in Harlem and a disturbing examination of the consequences of racial injustice, the book is an intensely personal and provocative document. It consists of two “letters,” written on the occasion of the centennial of the Emancipation Proclamation, that exhort Americans, both black and white, to attack the terrible legacy of racism. Described by The New York Times Book Review as “sermon, ultimatum, confession, deposition, testament, and chronicle…all presented in searing, brilliant prose,” The Fire Next Time stands as a classic of our literature.
by Afia Atakora
“Conjure Women is a sweeping story that brings the world of the South before and after the Civil War vividly to life. Spanning eras and generations, it tells of the lives of three unforgettable women: Miss May Belle, a wise healing woman; her precocious and observant daughter Rue, who is reluctant to follow in her mother’s footsteps as a midwife; and their enslaver’s daughter Varina. The secrets and bonds among these women and their community come to a head at the beginning of a war and at the birth of an accursed child, who sets the townspeople alight with fear and a spreading superstition that threatens their newly won, tenuous freedom.”
Beloved
by Toni Morrison
“Toni Morrison’s magnificent Pulitzer Prize-winning work—first published in 1987—brought the wrenching experience of slavery into the literature of our time, enlarging our comprehension of America’s original sin. Set in post–Civil War Ohio, it is the story of Sethe, an escaped slave who has lost a husband and buried a child; who has withstood savagery and not gone mad. Sethe, who now lives in a small house on the edge of town with her daughter, Denver, her mother-in-law, Baby Suggs, and a disturbing, mesmerizing apparition who calls herself Beloved.”
