juneteenth

Joyful Black people of all ages gather outdoors in Juneteenth Celebrate! t-shirts

Members of Reedy Chapel African Methodist Episcopal Church in Galveston, Texas, gather to celebrate Juneteenth on June 19, 2021. / Go Nakamura / Getty Images

The birthplace of Juneteenth is making sure the history of the holiday lives on.

Jenna Barnett 6-17-2021

Allan warren, CC BY-SA 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons

I read a lot of news this week, and Baldwin had something to say about all of it.

Jayne Marie Smith 6-17-2021

4th United States Colored Infantry, 1864. Public domain.

If you’ve been taught about Juneteenth at all, the common telling is that President Abraham Lincoln's 1863 Emancipation Proclamation pronounced freedom for all enslaved people in states that had seceded from the Union, but that Black Texans weren’t informed until June 19, 1865 — two and a half years later. The delay is sometimes blamed on distance and limited communication or that enslavers weren't inclined to comply with the law. While these may have been contributing factors, these explanations obscure why the Black residents of Galveston, Texas, actually celebrated the first Juneteenth — and obscures how that celebration still speaks to us today

A spoken-word performance for Juneteenth. 

6-19-2020

Third-generation historian John Whittington Franklin discusses with Rev. Jim Wallis how Black history is integral to a larger American historical narrative. 

Danté Stewart 6-19-2020

Protesters in masks activists march with signs against police shootings and racism, Honolulu, Hawaii, June 6,2020. Photo by Oscar Sweep / Shutterstock.com

The phrase "Black Lives Matter," like Joseph’s request to take his bones wherever his people go, is to keep memory alive. To keep it alive is to fight for us when we can't fight for ourselves. It is to remind us that though our world may forget us, there is One who does not. So even as people shout loud “look how much progress this country has made; be grateful,” we understand that, as Angela Davis writes, “freedom is a constant struggle.”

the Web Editors 6-19-2015

1. A Call for a National Lament
"Lament … is not a passive act. Many Christians may hear the word lament and assume that feeling bad about suffering is the purpose of lament. How sad that people died. How sad that the shooter had a mental illness. But lament moves beyond bad feelings for the privileged. ... Lament voices the prayers of the suffering and therefore serves as an act of protest against the powers."

2. Recalling Nine Spiritual Mentors, Gunned Down During Night of Devotion
“The nine victims — three men and six women, who ranged in age from 26 to 87 — were leaders, motivators, counselors and the people everyone could turn to for a heap of prayer, friends and relatives said.”

3. WATCH: Jon Stewart on Charleston Shooting
“This one is black and white. There’s no nuance here. … Nine people were shot in a black church by a white guy who hated them who wanted to start some kind of civil war. The confederate flag flies over South Carolina, and the roads are named for confederate generals. And the white guy feels like he’s the one who’s feels like this country has been taken away from him.”

4. WATCH: Changing the World Through Faith & Justice
Sojourners is hosting The Summit this week, and the conversations have been powerful. To catch all of today’s sessions, WATCH the livestream throughout the day and follow along on social media using #summitforchange. You can also view recorded sessions from the past two days. *Recordings available for a limited time.

Tripp Hudgins 6-20-2014
by TJ Gehling, Flickr.com

by TJ Gehling, Flickr.com

Sometimes it is hard to know even where to begin. We stare at this System, this complex web of human behaviors, and the institutions erected to memorialize them, and we simply do not know where to begin. How do we fix it?

"That's just the way it is," we say. "Some things will never change."

Systems are strange beasts. They take incredible human investment to maintain. They are the spaces by which many of us come to know ourselves, to know our place in this world. We identify ourselves in relationship to them. And yet they are so close to us as to be rendered invisible.

Until they hurt us. Until they step on us, exclude us, enslave us, brutalize us.

And this is when it gets interesting, of course; this is when they do their real work, these systems.