This week, the staff at Sojourners will have some well-deserved additional time off as we pause on Thursday to observe Juneteenth. I want to share why we do this — and why I hope other American Christians will join us in honoring this day as part of our shared call to justice.
It has been four years since Congress established Juneteenth as a national holiday on June 17, 2021. That same year, my executive team at Sojourners decided to follow suit for our organization. For us, taking Juneteenth off isn’t about performative justice or simply giving our staff an extra holiday. It’s about aligning our calendars with our convictions — redoubling our commitment to expanding freedom, learning the painful but necessary lessons from our past, and honoring one of the most significant moments in our nation’s history.
Even though Juneteenth is now a national holiday, I wonder how deeply its meaning has truly seeped into our civic consciousness, particularly at a time in which the uglier parts of our nation’s history are being whitewashed and censored. Anniversaries of accomplishments in the long freedom struggle offer a critical opportunity to push back against those efforts and tell the unvarnished truth about American history — the good, the bad, and the ugly. Amid today’s retrenchment and backsliding on racial justice, our nation needs the lessons of Juneteenth more than ever.
Juneteenth celebrates the effective end of slavery in the United States, specifically the moment on June 19, 1865, when Union troops arrived in Galveston, Texas, and proclaimed the news that “all slaves are free.” The holiday has been observed in Black communities ever since, with the first celebrations taking place in Texas in 1866 and spreading outward from there over the ensuing years. Juneteenth was first declared a state holiday in Texas in 1979, with many other states later following suit. But it was not until the aftermath of the racial justice protests that followed George Floyd’s murder in 2020 that the U.S. Congress acted, making Juneteenth a federal holiday the following year.
As I reflect on the day’s history and meaning, two historical footnotes stand out.
The first is that the Emancipation Proclamation signed by President Abraham Lincoln was issued a full two years before those enslaved in Galveston were set free. The second is that it required the arrival of Union troops to force slaveholders to comply with the Emancipation Proclamation.
Texas, like other Confederate states, did not recognize the authority of the United States government until the end of the Civil War. Even then, Texas did not voluntarily comply to free enslaved people within its borders until 2,000 Union soldiers forced their hand.
In other words, goodwill and trust that people would act according to the law were woefully insufficient. Federal intervention enabled emancipation in Texas. Too often, freedom requires real accountability to become reality.
These footnotes offer a timely reminder of how long it can take for laws promising freedom to result in actual freedom, especially in the context of our long and painful history of racial oppression in the United States. After the brief period of Reconstruction, the federal government reversed progress, as Jim Crow laws throughout the former Confederate states successfully denied the right to vote and many other basic rights for Black Americans for almost a century.
Though the accomplishments of the Civil Rights Movement were and remain essential, they hardly signaled the end of structural racism in the United States. Ever since the 2013 Shelby County vs. Holder Supreme Court decisions weakened enforcement of voting rights guaranteed through the Voting Rights Act, we have seen a flurry of new proposed legislation such as the SAVE Act, which would erect new barriers for voting that would negatively impact Black and brown communities. The work of liberation — for Black Americans and all marginalized people — requires tenacity, persistence, and a stubborn, active hope in the face of resistance, indifference, and delay.
The long and ongoing struggle for Black liberation calls to mind Jesus’ parable of the persistent widow in Luke 18:1-8. In this story, Jesus teaches us that unjust rulers and structures of power do not freely grant justice and liberation but can be persuaded or compelled to grant justice through our relentless will when we refuse to give up. Juneteenth reminds us both of the necessity of that persistence and the good news of liberation — God’s ultimate desire and promise for all those suffering under the yoke of oppression.
Juneteenth can and should be a day of pure rest and joyful celebration, particularly for us Black Americans who continue to carry the intergenerational trauma of slavery. As my former colleague Jayne Marie Smith wrote for Sojourners a few years ago, it matters a great deal that the news of the end of slavery was brought to Galveston not just by a white Union General proclaiming freedom, but by thousands of “Black men in Union uniforms… It was the beautiful presence of authoritative Black bodies that made these words real. These Black soldiers gave flesh to the emancipating spoken words.”
From the perspective of Christian faith, Juneteenth also carries important resonances for us today. We remember with joy that the soldiers who marched in Galveston brought the news of liberation directly to the town’s largest Black church. We also remember with pain and righteous anger the role that all too many white churches played first in maintaining and justifying slavery, and later in defending Jim Crow or urging restraint to the leaders of the Civil Rights Movement. It’s a day that should spur sober reflection and renewed commitment to justice work — and that’s why it’s so important that Juneteenth becomes a holiday for all Americans and that we spend the day away from our usual daily routines to pause and treat it with the reverence and joy that it deserves.
Juneteenth offers all Christians a holy interruption — an opportunity to reckon with our nation’s history of slavery and the church’s frequent complicity in that system, and to find renewal through our rest and celebration so we can re-enlist in the ongoing liberative work of God.
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