They can also take advantage of the day to train. Last year, as Juneteenth became a federal holiday, just over a quarter of Americans knew nothing at all and another third knew “somewhat”, according to Gallup. This year, the percentage who knows nothing about the holidays has dropped to 11% and the percentage who knows a little about it has dropped to 29%.
Even my family, who had celebrated June 16 for generations, knew very little about it. My mother and I went to the same school — decades apart, of course — a black institution that had existed in one form or another since 1887.
But she doesn’t remember any specific instruction in class during the holidays and neither do I. Regardless, we both realized we had started to educate us more about the day in recent years, with my mother, who turns 80 in November, using “a little activity book” that a local church had bought to teach the holiday to her children. As she said, “I learned more from this book than I ever learned about Juneteenth. »
The fact that Juneteenth is dedicated as a national holiday makes it more likely that all Americans will learn about not only the day itself, but also the legacy of slavery, more likely to question the very notion of freedom and justice. examine the imperfections of the order of emancipation.
President Abraham Lincoln issued the Emancipation Proclamation on January 1, 1863, freeing enslaved people held in states that had seceded, not states that had not.
But because the proclamation was issued in the midst of the Civil War, only a small number of slaves were freed immediately. In fact, at the time, the main purpose of the order may have been a propaganda tool. As the National Archives points out, “it captured the hearts and imaginations of millions of Americans and fundamentally transformed the character of war.”
