Movements That Made Us: Juneteenth
As American Pride Rises commemorates Juneteenth and looks ahead to America’s 250th anniversary, we are reflecting on the movements that made us and the generations of Americans who fought to expand freedom, opportunity, and democracy, even when our nation fell short of its promises.
Juneteenth marks one of the most important milestones in that story.
On June 19, 1865, Union soldiers arrived in Galveston, Texas, and announced that the Civil War had ended and that all enslaved people were free. The news came more than two years after President Abraham Lincoln issued the Emancipation Proclamation.
For the hundreds of thousands of enslaved Black Americans in Texas, freedom had been delayed. Though emancipation had been declared, it had not yet been fully realized. Juneteenth serves as a powerful reminder that progress in America has often come slowly and that the distance between our ideals and reality can be measured in years, generations, and sometimes centuries.
The story of Juneteenth is not only about delayed freedom in the past. It is also a reminder that access to opportunity, equality, and full participation in American life has long been delayed for many communities throughout our nation’s history.
While slavery formally ended, Black Americans continued to face violence, discrimination, and organized efforts to strip them of their rights. During Reconstruction, formerly enslaved people built businesses, held public office, voted, and helped shape a more inclusive democracy. Yet those gains were met with fierce resistance.
One of the most striking examples occurred in 1898 in Wilmington, North Carolina. There, white supremacists violently overthrew a duly elected, interracial local government in what is widely recognized as the only successful coup d’état in American history. The attack resulted in the deaths of Black residents, the destruction of Black-owned businesses, and the removal of elected leaders whose only offense was participating in democracy.
Wilmington was not an isolated incident. Across the country, Black Americans faced literacy tests, poll taxes, racial terror, lynchings, intimidation at the ballot box, and segregation laws designed to deny them the rights they had been promised. For decades after emancipation, many Americans remained free in name but were denied the full benefits of citizenship.
Yet the story of America is not defined solely by these injustices. It is also defined by the people who challenged them.
The abolition movement, Reconstruction, the Civil Rights Movement, and countless local campaigns for justice helped push our nation closer to its founding ideals. Through activism, advocacy, and civic participation, generations of Americans expanded opportunity and strengthened our democracy.
That is why it is so important that we tell the full story of our nation’s history.
America’s past is neither a story of uninterrupted progress nor one of unending failure. It is a story of people confronting injustice and working to build a more perfect union. When we erase difficult chapters or replace them with a whitewashed narrative that focuses only on American exceptionalism, we lose sight of the courage and determination that helped create the freedoms many enjoy today.
The principles of diversity, equity, and inclusion are part of that story. They reflect the belief that every person deserves the opportunity to thrive, regardless of their race, background, neighborhood, gender, or identity. They represent the ongoing effort to ensure that the promises of liberty and equality are available to everyone—not just a select few.
As we celebrate Juneteenth and prepare to mark America’s 250th anniversary, we should delve deeper into the stories of triumph, resilience, and democratic progress that showcase how far we have come. By understanding the struggles that shaped our nation, we can better appreciate the progress we’ve made and recognize the work that remains ahead.
Juneteenth reminds us that freedom delayed is not freedom denied forever. It reminds us that progress requires persistence, that democracy requires participation, and that America’s greatest achievements have come when ordinary people demanded that the nation live up to its highest ideals.
Those are the movements that made us. And those are the stories worth celebrating.