While Congress recently designated Juneteenth an official holiday, the meaning of Juneteenth for Black people has been a lived reality for 156 years: freedom without safety.
Whether this new holiday will inspire Americans to take it upon themselves to understand the past to confront present-day systemic anti-Blackness remains to be seen. The question that loomed after the end of slavery remains as relevant today: is it possible to be Black and safe in the United States?
For Black communities, Juneteenth has served as a touchstone to reflect on the enslavement and exploitation of Black people while bearing witness to the ongoing struggle and suffering for full participation in America society. The day challenges the comforting national narrative of the making of the first modern democracy through principled political independence from the British empire.
Frederick Douglass memorably captured this intrinsic contradiction in his 1852 speech entitled “What to the Slave is the Fourth of July”. “What, to the American slave, is your Fourth of July? I answer: a day that reveals to him, more than other days in the year, the gross injustice and cruelty to which he is a constant victim.
For more than a century and a half, Juneteenth has served as a touchtone for bearing witness to slavery and its afterlife, a space for mobilization against white supremacy, and a platform for racial justice. These lessons have largely been neglected or ignored by most Americans. Instead, they would rather wait for the return of yet another racial reckoning to momentarily consider the cruel riddle of America: Black freedom without safety.
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