Juneteenth Thoughts

On June 19, we celebrated Juneteenth, which commemorates the end of slavery in the United States in 1865. President Abraham Lincoln actually signed the proclamation in 1863, but many white slave owners didn’t tell their slaves because they wanted to keep them as their property.

The injustices and cruelty against Blacks continued long after that even to the present day.  One of the most noteworthy examples was the brutal lynching of Emmet Till, a 14-year-old Black teenager, accused of flirting with a white woman in Mississippi in 1955. Another is the murder of Medgar Evers, a civil rights activist, who challenged the segregation at the University of Mississippi in 1963. The most famous is the assassination of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.in 1968. The most recent was George Floyd, the innocent Black man killed by police in Minneapolis in 2022.

Perhaps the most egregious example of prejudice was the destruction of a wealthy Black neighborhood in Tulsa, Oklahoma, in 1921, which has only recently come to light. A white mob killed hundreds of Black residents and set fire to over 1,000 homes. 

Blacks continue to endure injustices. They have been deprived of equal education, equal pay, and decent housing, and endured numerous instances of discrimination by government authorities. The movement to give Black families reparations for the injustices of the past is not too popular, but their descendants deserve some kind of remuneration.

Black people have made many contributions in the fields of literature, science, art, education, architecture, and aerospace.  Juneteenth helps us remember the many ways they have enriched our lives.