Juneteenth and Why We Keep Fighting for Freedom

Wed, 06/19/2019 - 12:59pm by RevLauren

On June 19, 1865, Union soldiers in Galveston Bay, Texas informed enslaved Blacks that they were free - two years after the Emancipation Proclamation was issued. Known as “Juneteenth,” African Americans celebrate this day as the end of chattel slavery. Although emancipation was a major step in the freedom of Blacks in America, little did they know the challenges awaiting them during Reconstruction and the “Jim Crow” era. African Americans had no education, no resources, no voting rights and suffered under unjust systems such as the “Black Codes” and the sharecropping system, which ensured that workers would never profit from their land. Vigilante terrorist groups such as the Ku Klux Klan sprung up to enforce the codes, and lynching skyrocketed. If African Americans violated the law, they were sentenced to forced labor and rented out to private companies by the state. Doesn’t sound much different from today’s prison industrial complex, does it?  

Juneteenth is a reminder that although African Americans are technically free, they still suffer under similar unjust systems, the most damaging, I believe, to be the prison industrial complex. Here are some facts from the

  • In 2014, African Americans constituted 2.3 million, or 34 percent, of the total 6.8 million correctional population.
  • African Americans are incarcerated at more than 5 times the rate of whites.
  • The imprisonment rate for African American women is twice that of white women.
  • Nationwide, African American children represent 32 percent of children who are arrested, 42 percent of children who are detained, and 52 percent of children whose cases are judicially waived to criminal court.
  • Though African Americans and Hispanics make up approximately 32 percent of the U.S. population, they comprised 56 percent of all incarcerated people in 2015.
  • If African Americans and Hispanics were incarcerated at the same rates as whites, prison and jail populations would decline by almost 40 percent.

There is nothing new under sun, and we see the U.S. government enacting the same tactics it has used against freed African Americans against immigrants and those seeking asylum in the United States. Migrant detention and family separation are very reminiscent of the atrocities African Americans faced after emancipation. Immigrants have emerged as another “criminal class,” and the president’s racist rhetoric fuels this notion. We all remember .  

This is why in the midst of our celebrating, Juneteenth should remind us that we still have a long way to go when it comes to “justice for all,” and we should continue to be vigilant in our fight for justice. The hope is to see a country where all of its citizens are truly free and those seeking refuge are offered the opportunity to experience this freedom as well.

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