Support justice-driven, accurate and transparent news — make a quick donation to Truthout today! 

It is difficult to find inspiration on this Juneteenth. We are still living in difficult times. In the last year, hundreds of thousands of African Americans have lost jobs. Some state legislatures in the South — Florida, Alabama, Tennessee, and Mississippi — have sought to dilute Black political power after the Supreme Court issued its Louisiana v. Callais decision. Meanwhile, this new administration has enacted a white nationalist immigration policy — effectively closing the Southern border; throwing undocumented people into prisons and camps; deporting thousands, including children; and unleashing the Customs and Border Protection (CBP) and Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) onto blue cities like Los Angeles and Minneapolis. However, there is hope to be found even in the bleakest of times, as our strong movements continue to challenge growing authoritarianism.

International Solidarity and Emancipation

When thinking about the relevance of Juneteenth, I remembered W.E.B. Du Bois’s reference of English workers who boycotted Southern cotton in solidarity with Black enslaved workers during the Civil War in his influential study, Black Reconstruction in America, 1860-1880. During the conflict, President Abraham Lincoln and the U.S. forces imposed a blockade preventing the flow of Southern cotton to be manufactured in English mills.

While textile producers in Liverpool advocated for the British government to disrupt the blockade, some English mill workers decided to throw their support behind Black enslaved workers and Lincoln. In 1862, hundreds of textile workers gathered at the Manchester Free Trade Hall and voted to adopt a resolution continuing their boycott in support of the Union’s war against the Confederacy and for racial justice in the U.S. “Justice demands for the black, no less than for the white, the protection of law,” the workers announced in a public letter addressed to Lincoln.

And they did so at great sacrifice. Without cotton to process, the laborers risked impoverishment. However, the English workers saw themselves as connected to the cause of enslaved Black people and the Union in the fight against exploitation. “Since we have discerned, however, that the victory of the Free North in the war which has so sorely distressed us, as well as afflicted you, will strike off the fetters of the slave, you have attracted........

© Truthout