"It Deserves Wider Reach"

"These celebrations would continue throughout the 19^th century—growing in size and prominence—until the advent of Jim Crow and the aggressive repression of the early 20th century, when blacks were fully disenfranchised and outside the protection of law, vulnerable to the depredations of terrorists and lynch mobs. Put another way, it’s difficult to celebrate freedom when your life is defined by oppression on all sides. Still, the holiday remained in the civic life of black Texans, and began to expand beyond the state with the Great Migration of blacks from the South. As Isabelle Wilkerson writes in The Warmth of Other Suns: The Epic Story of America’s Great Migration, 'The people from Texas took Juneteenth Day to Los Angeles, Oakland, Seattle, and other places they went.'"


Jamelle Bouie in Slate marks Juneteenth.