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Juneteenth, equal rights and the heritage of ALL Americans

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America today celebrates Juneteenth, commemorating both the horrors of the nation’s original sin, slavery, and its end.

The holiday traces to victorious Union Gen. Gordon Granger’s June 19, 1865, order putting the Emancipation Proclamation into full legal effect across Texas and freeing all the state’s remaining slaves. It has since spread, culminating in federal recognition in 2021.

But what, as a holiday for all Americans, should we make of it?

Let us not treat black history and black life as somehow unapproachably apart from the larger history and life of this country.

As the great sociologist and civil-rights warrior W.E.B. Du Bois said in 1905:

We will not be satisfied........

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