The Juneteenth 2021 Celebration will be a little different from all of the other Juneteenth celebrations that have happened before now because the year 2021 celebration will be the first time Juneteenth is celebrated as a national holiday. Just like the years of hard work, dedication, and prayers that led to ending slavery in the United States, the years of hard work, dedication, and prayers to make Juneteenth a national holiday have finally become a realization.
Only, unlike the news about the Emancipation Proclamation, that was withheld from the slaves in the southern U.S. for two years, notification of Juneteenth reaching national holiday status was instant, given today's technology, catching many people, myself included, off guard. Talk about making Juneteenth a federal holiday had been going on ever since I first became aware that the juneteenth celebration existed.
To be perfectly honest I had started to believe that because of today's highly polarized political climate debate in Washington DC about making Juneteenth a national holiday would once more be batted around and once more tabled, tossed aside, forgotten. News of President Joe Biden finally signing the Juneteenth Celebration into the history books came as a total surprise.
And the name Juneteenth National Independence Day has a nice ring to it since on July 4, 1776 the majority of black people living in the colonies were still slaves and not considered citizens of the same nation they fought for in the colonial war, and in the Civil War. June 19th, 1865 was the date that freedom for African American people in the United States began followed by the 13th Amendment that abolished slavery everywhere in the U.S., and the 14th Amendment granting citizenship rights and equal protection under the law to the ex-slaves.
I would love to have been able to learn the above historical facts when I was in grammar and Jr. high school. When I was in grade-school I had no ideas about a Juneteenth celebration. My parents (from Louisiana and Texas) seemed more interested in forgetting about their life experinces growing up in the Jim Crow south than sharing them.
For the sake of the African Ancestors, the history of slavery in this nation should not be forgotten. It (slavery) did after all happen, and African American people in this country have suffered from the end of slavery aftereffects since June, 19th 1865, and the so-called re-construction period. For the naysayers who might think that learning about slavery might evoke too many unflattering images of the way some white people used to treat black people, I say this would be an excellent opportunity to learn about all of the white people that did not support slavery and the contributions they made that would eventually bring slavery to an end in the U.S.
Juneteenth is truly a National Independence Day because what started on that day and ended with the passage of the 13th Amendment did make that a day of freedom for the entire nation and the words in the constitution finally true for everyone, that all men were created equal and treated equally under the law.
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