Juneteenth: Freedom, Progress, and Celebrating Black Voices and Lives

Juneteenth—celebrated June 19 in the United States—marks the day those held in slavery were told they had been freed. The date commemorates June 19, 1865, when it was announced that tens of thousands of African-Americans in Texas had been emancipated, and for all its significance is only one step in the complex and painful history of racial inequality in the US. Today, Juneteenth remembers that day and the events that led up to it, educates Americans about history and current events central to the Black community, and is a time Black Americans come together to celebrate their resilience, culture, and progress. 

We’ve put together a collection of articles and stories centering on Juneteenth—family stories; celebrations of black womanhood; the economic, political, societal, and deeply personal pressures still faced by Black Americans today; and how to respect and observe the holiday, including a petition for Juneteenth to be recognized as a national holiday. We honor Black women and the entire Black community today, and we pledge to work to listen, respect, celebrate, and amplify Black voices.

One Woman's Quest to Make Juneteenth a National Holiday, from NPR—“A 90-year-old Texas woman is trying to make Juneteenth, a holiday that honors the freedom of slaves, a national holiday. She’s walked around the country and will end her petition in Washington, D.C.”

10 Ways To Observe Juneteenth This Year, from Women’s Health—“So if you’re a Black American—this is our Independence Day, and it deserves to be observed. If you’re worried about how the novel coronavirus pandemic will affect Juneteenth this year, and maybe some of your plans got cancelled already—don’t worry. There are plenty of ways you can still take part. How? Well, you can start by signing 93-year-old activist Opal Lee’s petition to make Juneteenth a national holiday, which is long overdue.”

This Juneteenth, We Should Uplift America’s Black Businesses, from The Brookings Institution—“Women—and specifically, Black women—were also underrepresented as business owners in the survey. Women represent more than half of the U.S. population, but they owned only one in five businesses (just over 1.1 million) in 2017. This was about the same proportion as it was in 2012. Black women owned less than 1 percent (one in 130) of the nation’s businesses in 2017, even though Black women made up 6.6 percent of the country’s population.”

Ida, Maya, Rosa, Harriet: The Power in Our Names, from The New York Times—“For nearly two centuries, Black women passed on names as remembrances of struggles for freedom, dignity and citizenship. We can find these stories in articles, textbooks, museum exhibits and even popular culture. But the lives of these sheroes are not being newly discovered in the 21st century. Instead, they are inherited from women who handed them down to inspire next generations. Passed along, from mothers to daughters to granddaughters, our names carry with them visions of freedom.”

In Miss Juneteenth, a Mother’s Dream Deferred, from The New Republic—“Though the tension between mother and daughter remains center stage, Miss Juneteenth’s broader subject turns out to be the political economics of surviving as a black woman in Texas.”

How 13 Black Women Are Celebrating Juneteenth This Year, from Cosmopolitan—“Over the years, Americans have honored the day in beautifully diverse ways from participating in Juneteenth parades to attending rodeos to making the journey down to Galveston with their families. But this year is remarkably different than years past. This year, Juneteenth falls amid unprecedented demonstrations and support for the Black Lives Matter movement following the deaths of George Floyd, Breonna Taylor, Oluwatoyin ‘Toyin’ Salau, Dominique ‘Rem’mie’ Fells, Riah Milton, Ahmaud Arbery, and multiple hangings. [...] I’m dedicating the day to signing petitions to demand justice for Black lives and defunding the police, researching which brands I consume that benefit from inhumane prison labor, and discovering more Black-owned businesses. Here's how other Black women are planning to spend the day.”

Awe-Inspiring Images Pay Tribute to Canada's Radical Black Feminists

Art has the power to inspire, illustrate, move us to action, and draw our attention to forgotten pieces of our own history—and one artist in Canada is bringing all of that together in a powerful series of images featuring black feminist heroes from Canada's history.

Black feminists often address—through their words or actions—intersections of racism, sexism, class oppression, gender identity and more in society. They argue that these issues are bound together in ways that compound the oppression that women—particularly women of color and others from multiple oppressed groups—experience.

What people may not always realize is that these pioneers fighting for human rights have been with us for centuries. Artist Naomi Moyer, a black woman living in Canada, wanted to draw more attention to Canada's black feminists. “I wanted to turn the few sentences that were written about these women from history books and online into a huge, colorful punch in the face,” she says in a feature by The Huffington Post. 

huffingtonpost.com - Mary Bibb was born in Rhode Island around 1820 as the daughter of free black Quakers. After becoming one of the first black woman teachers in North America, she involved herself in the anti-slavery movement.

However, following the 1850 passing of the Fugitive Slave Law, which demanded that all escaped slaves in America, including her husband, abolitionist Henry Bibb, be returned to their masters upon capture ― even if found in free states ― Bibb moved to Canada. Upon relocating, she and her husband began housing fugitive slaves in their home. Together they started publishing a newspaper, Voice of the Fugitive, the first major paper aimed at black Canadians.

Today, Bibb is considered the first black woman journalist in Canada. And yet, most Canadians do not even know her name. Self-taught artist Naomi Moyer, herself a black woman living in Canada, was disturbed by the lack of awareness surrounding figures like Bibb, women that Moyer could identify with and look up to.

“The school curriculum here is just as flawed and deficient as it is in the States,” Moyer told The Huffington Post. “Not one teacher, from kindergarten to college, gave me any book to read that was written by a black woman, let alone a black Canadian woman. The only kind of exposure most black people really got about ‘blackness’ or the black experience was through media and pop culture from the States.”

Moyer realized that it was extremely important for her to learn the names and stories of the women shaping Canadian black history. If no one else was going to teach her, she would do the research herself. The print series “Black Women in Canada” integrates Moyer’s research with graphic visuals that bring the under-acknowledged heroines to life.

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