The history and hope of Juneteenth persist, despite the right’s best efforts

Millions of Americans celebrated Juneteenth on Friday, commemorating the arrival of federal troops in Galveston, Texas on June 19, 1865, with news that the Civil War was over and that the enslaved people of Texas were free.

Our newest federal holiday, signed into law by President Joe Biden in 2021, brought national recognition to Juneteenth celebrations that African American families and friends had been holding since the year after freedom came to Texas. 

Although Juneteenth is first and foremost a celebration of freedom, it is also a timely reminder that freedom is threatened when self-serving people with power ignore the law. 

Under President Abraham Lincoln’s Emancipation Proclamation, enslaved people in Texas and across the Confederacy were freed on Jan. 1, 1863. But with no one around to make local slaveholders and public officials comply, slavery continued in Texas until Major General Gordon Granger and thousands of Union troops — Black and white — arrived to enforce it. 

In historical context, Juneteenth is also a reminder that progress is not irreversible. The freedom and promise of justice that were won at immense human cost in the Civil War flourished for only a decade during Reconstruction, before giving way to the appallingly misnamed “Redemption” movement.

The Compromise of 1877 led to the withdrawal of federal troops from across the South, leaving Black southerners vulnerable to the brutal violence and disenfranchisement that came with Jim Crow laws enforcing racial segregation and discrimination. 

It wasn’t until 100 years after federal troops brought freedom to Texas that Congress passed and the president signed........

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