Juneteenth is one of several Independence Days that should be celebrated
The long struggle for rights in America.
There are few things that the United States does better than mythmaking. A nation with a relatively short history has to define itself somehow, and the US has chosen to do so by creating stories about how it came to be, what it is, and what it has accomplished. Among the most powerful stories that America tells itself is that we gained our freedom and independence July 4, 1776. The Declaration of Independence states “that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.”
That sounds like a rock-solid basis for a new nation to me.
Unfortunately, all men haven’t been created equal in the United States from the beginning. And women have been an afterthought. Yet we still celebrate Independence Day as the day that we declared our independence, our freedom, from Great Britain.
But not everyone gained freedom with the signing of the Treaty of Paris in 1783, which officially ended the Revolutionary War. That was great news for some people, namely white men, and especially white men who owned land. But, as you can imagine, the majority of the new nation didn’t fit that description.
What about everyone else?
Yesterday was Juneteenth, which marks the day on June 19, 1865 that enslaved citizens in Texas were told that they were free, more than two months after the official end of the Civil War. Juneteenth only became a federal holiday in 2021. And how did the current administration mark Juneteenth?
Trump posted, “Too many non-working holidays in America. It is costing our Country $BILLIONS OF DOLLARS to keep all of these businesses closed. The workers don’t want it either! Soon we’ll end up having a holiday for every once working day of the year. It must change if we are going to, MAKE AMERICA GREAT AGAIN!” No celebration of freedom. No appreciation for all that countless generations of enslaved people endured. Just complaining about a day where the emphasis isn’t productivity and making money. His press secretary, the dreadful Karoline Leavitt, announced, “I know this is a federal holiday. I want to thank all of you for showing up to work. We are certainly here.” Translation: This isn’t an important federal holiday so we’re going to act like it doesn’t exist.
It's no surprise that the administration that wants to restore confederate names to military bases, while also whitewashing any negative aspect of American history, wouldn’t want to acknowledge that the road to freedom for some groups in America extended much beyond 1776, and some people are still traveling down that road. That’s not the sort of messy truth that fits the American myth that MAGA endorses. It’s much easier to tell a story about people coming to this land for religious freedom, and then fighting against oppressors and their taxes, and act like everything after that has been freedom, liberty, and opportunity.
It makes perfect sense to celebrate Juneteenth to mark the day that the final group of enslaved people were freed in the US. It took almost ninety years for America to decide that freedom should extend to non-whites. Unfortunately, equality has been even more difficult to come by.
Women didn’t get the right to vote until the nineteenth amendment was ratified in 1920. America existed for almost 150 years before we decided that we should guarantee the right to vote for half of our citizens. And it took another half century or more for women to earn rights that are taken for granted, such as not being discriminated on credit applications or housing applications. A court dominated by white men recently restricted a woman’s right to choose what to do with her own body, so we obviously still have much work to do before we can argue that women are truly independent.
Native Americans have gained rights in America one small step at a time. Even now they’re seemingly an afterthought of the American government, despite having been in this country longer than anyone. They’re in the unique position of having been independent and then losing their independence, and having to fight to reclaim it.
America has even been slow in protecting children. Before the Fair Labor Standards Act in 1938, children often worked dangerous jobs in factories and textile mills, cheap labor being more important than child protection.
And, of course, LGBTQ people are still fighting for their rights, especially now when faced with an administration actively opposing those rights. The administration would do well to remember the first line of the Supreme Court’s ruling protecting the right to same sex marriage: "The Constitution promises liberty to all within its reach, a liberty that includes certain specific rights that allow persons, within a lawful realm, to define and express their identity.”
One of the most inspiring things to me about the Declaration of Independence is its inherent optimism. A group of people didn’t like the way things were going, imagined that things could change for the better, and banded together to make it happen. And while their Declaration and the war that followed did lay the groundwork for a new nation, large groups of people were left out, despite the high-minded language. We should recognize that, and celebrate the optimism that leads groups of people to worked toward continually improving this country for those left behind.