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Lifestyle The New Sober Boom Getting Hooked on Quitting

Getting Hooked on Quitting

Education Liberal Arts Cuts Are Dangerous Is College Necessary?

Liberal Arts Cuts Are Dangerous

Is College Necessary?

Finance Dying Parents Costing Millennials Dear Gen Z Investing In Le Creuset

Dying Parents Costing Millennials Dear

Gen Z Investing In Le Creuset

Crypto Investing SEC vs Celebrity Crypto Promoters ‘Dark’ Personalities Drawn to BTC

Investing SEC vs Celebrity Crypto Promoters ‘Dark’ Personalities Drawn to BTC

SEC vs Celebrity Crypto Promoters

‘Dark’ Personalities Drawn to BTC

Reviews Lifestyle The New Sober Boom Getting Hooked on Quitting Education Liberal Arts Cuts Are Dangerous Is College Necessary? Finance Dying Parents Costing Millennials Dear Gen Z Investing In Le Creuset Crypto Investing SEC vs Celebrity Crypto Promoters ‘Dark’ Personalities Drawn to BTC

Lifestyle The New Sober Boom Getting Hooked on Quitting

Getting Hooked on Quitting

Education Liberal Arts Cuts Are Dangerous Is College Necessary?

Liberal Arts Cuts Are Dangerous

Is College Necessary?

Finance Dying Parents Costing Millennials Dear Gen Z Investing In Le Creuset

Dying Parents Costing Millennials Dear

Gen Z Investing In Le Creuset

Crypto Investing SEC vs Celebrity Crypto Promoters ‘Dark’ Personalities Drawn to BTC

Investing SEC vs Celebrity Crypto Promoters ‘Dark’ Personalities Drawn to BTC

SEC vs Celebrity Crypto Promoters

‘Dark’ Personalities Drawn to BTC

What do we celebrate on Juneteenth?

The holiday marking slavery's end has always carried contradictions. In the Trump era, more so than ever

Published June 19, 2026 6:30AM (EDT)

This year marks the sixth anniversary of the U.S. honoring Juneteenth as a federal holiday, and 161 years since the day chattel slavery was considered to have ended in this country.

“People just think of Juneteenth as a festival and as a Texas thing,” Black activist Opal Lee noted in an interview conducted shortly after the Biden administration and Congress had officially made June 19 a federal holiday.

I was very much in that camp being described by Lee, the “grandmother of Juneteenth,” who had devoted years of her near-century-long life to gaining the day  federal recognition.

As a Black kid growing up in the Michigan suburbs in the ’90s, my K-12 education on slavery was like that of many other Americans — both concise and, to put it mildly, imprecise. And my awareness of Juneteenth was virtually zilch. But Juneteenth has come to mean a lot to me, as it has to millions of other Americans, although there’s still little consensus on what exactly the day means. Its cultural and political value are arguably just as much as in flux today as they have ever been.

Despite the passage of time, even the basic lore behind Juneteenth is still murky, and feverishly debated. Did Gordon Granger, an otherwise obscure Union Army general, really stroll into Galveston and read a decree from President Abraham Lincoln declaring, to a sea of onlookers, that all enslaved people were now officially free? Or did his men just plaster up some notices containing the decree across the city, roughly as utility workers warn locals about downed power lines?

And what about the potentially anticlimactic matter that enslaved people in Texas may already have known they were free, if only technically? The consensus among historical experts is that many were already keenly aware of the altered situation, thanks to the elaborate word-of-mouth information relay of enslaved people’s social........

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