Juneteenth

I vividly remember the history class where I first learned about Juneteenth.  I was an undergraduate at UCLA - so it was the late ‘80s - and there was a passing reference to June 19 Black community celebrations in Texas in a collection of essays about the end of slavery.  I read them for a post-Civil War/Reconstruction American history class and the reference caught my attention.

I recall thinking that I had never heard of it before; that the professor in the history class never mentioned it himself.  At the time, I was a Californian through and through and that Southern history seemed distant from the world in which I lived.

Within a few years, I had moved to Nashville and Southern and Civil War history was everywhere I looked.  The more I explored the locations of historical events; the more I read the history of the Civil War and Reconstruction, the more Juneteenth stood out in my mind, as both an idea and a celebration.  It stood out as a cultural reflection of the history I was thinking about and sought to understand and it also stood out for its absence in the world of mainstream American culture.

In the last few years, Juneteenth has attracted more attention.  This year, in the explosion of real and, it seems, enduring interest in taking on the challenges of repairing the years of systemic inequality that is modern America, Juneteenth is at the center of our current dialogue.  If we want to make real the pledge that Black lives matter, and I certainly do, it’s long overdue that we think about our national history in terms of what’s been neglected, marginalized, or just plain left out.

For my Civics and Citizenship 8th grade class, summer reading will include a reflection on Juneteenth (this one, by Annette Garden Reed, which is both personal and historically rich), and some more readings around the idea of what history gets monuments, what gets ignored, and what that difference tells us about our national identity.

At minimum, my 8th graders will know and understand Juneteenth well before the age when I first knew of it.  At maximum, well, when you know that truth of your nations’s history, then you know the challenges that lie before you.  You learn what kind of citizen you would like to become.  That’s why 8th graders need to know our history.  And knowing about Juneteenth seems like a very good place to start.