Honoring the History and Legacy of Juneteenth
On Monday, June 20, the United States observes the newly designated federal holiday of “Juneteenth.”
But what is Juneteenth?
Created on June 19, 1865, the “Juneteenth” (short for “June Nineteenth”) holiday commemorates the effective end of slavery in the United States when the Union Army announced that enslaved people in the western edge of Texas, Galveston Bay, were now free.
These troops, however, arrived in Texas more than 2 years after the Emancipation Proclamation was enacted on Jan. 1, 1863. During the intervening time, slavery continued as it had before, demonstrating both the deficits of wartime communication and the resiliency of the institution of slavery.
It wasn’t until U.S. General Gordon Granger was in Texas on that June day and read General Orders No. 3 that stated: “The people of Texas are informed that, in accordance with a proclamation from the Executive of the United States, all slaves are free.” It was then that the more than 250,000 enslaved people in Texas, some of the last in the country, were liberated from bondage, and the day was known as National Freedom Day, Liberation Day, or Jubilee Day, among others.
The holiday was officially named a U.S. federal holiday in June 2021, though it has been a state or ceremonial holiday in many places for many years (as early as the late 1800s in some places.) In fact, in 1980, Texas was the first state to name Juneteenth as a statewide holiday.
In African American communities, this holiday is also known as America’s second Independence Day, where it not only signifies the start of Reconstruction in the U.S. (1865-1877), but is also used to celebrate Black culture, to commemorate the struggle for freedom in Black communities, and to urge community members to remain relentless in seeking political, social, and economic rights. As recent news events have shown, this struggle for equality and equity continues to this day.
Advancement professionals can play a role in aiding communities in this struggle. In addition to using this day to commemorate the progress made toward social, racial, and ethnic equity or to reflect on the economic and social impact of slavery in the United States, we can also use the awareness of the holiday to highlight the diversity, equity, inclusion, and belonging (DEIB) initiatives happening on your campuses and in your communities.
Connect with your students, alumni, and donors and share what is happening to raise engagement and spark excitement about your institution’s commitment to creating the sense of belonging for everyone within your community. Advancement is the pathway to social change.
See the links below for references to Juneteenth and examples of how colleges and universities are celebrating.
About the author(s)
Benjamin R. Fiore-Walker, Ph.D. (He/Him) is originally from Southampton, PA in suburban Philadelphia. Ben received a Ph.D. in neuroscience (psychobiology) from the University of Virginia, and has a bachelor’s degree in Psychology from Allegheny College in Meadville, PA. His research area of focus was in the development of brain circuitry as they relate to epilepsy and autism.
Ben comes to his position as the senior director for the Opportunity and Inclusion Center (OIC) after close to 25 years working in the diversity space. Before coming to CASE, Ben was the manager of the Office of Diversity Programs at the American Chemical Society (ACS) in Washington, DC, where he had a broad mandate to develop strategies to build out relationships and initiatives from across the society in order to help ACS live into its core value of diversity, equity, inclusion and respect. Before ACS, he served as a senior managing director for diversity and inclusion at Teach for America (TFA), where he was responsible for devising and quantifying diversity metrics for TFA for the development of initiatives to diversity staff and corps member populations. Prior to TFA, he spent 19 years at the Georgetown University School of Medicine where he was the Associate Dean for Diversity & Inclusion. This work has taken Ben into many elementary and middle schools in underserved areas of the D.C. metro region, where he uses neuroscience to get kids excited about STEM fields and higher education.
Ben has written on and studied diversity climate in higher education and the workplace and is a firm believer that diversity & inclusion matters. Ben believes that even though heterogeneity is the key ingredient to success—with diverse teams being more productive and creative than non-diverse teams, it’s all for not if the members of those diverse teams don’t feel their differences are celebrated or valued. We need both, diversity and inclusion to reach our full potential.