Nicole Lynn Lewis, Founder and CEO of Generation Hope, was an honor roll student and a teen mom. do every day to uplift our communities.īringing Lived Experience to Bear: Generation Hope We spoke with the leaders of three organizations that exemplify the important work that Black-founded nonprofits across the U.S. Learning and reflecting are key first steps, but donors can also use this occasion to discover and support Black-founded and -led nonprofits doing impactful work often under difficult circumstances. Donors particularly can educate themselves about this history and address the inequalities that hold all of us back from realizing the beloved community. Juneteenth is a time for all Americans to reflect on the shameful history of slavery and the practice of anti-Black racism that persists to this day. ![]() It wasn’t until 2021, 156 years later, that Juneteenth was made a US national holiday by President Joe Biden. Celebrations of Juneteenth were repressed by white plantation owners and overseers who didn’t believe in emancipation, as the holiday was celebrated primarily by Black Americans. While it took time to enforce the order into practice everywhere, Juneteenth (a portmanteau of June and nineteenth) became a day of celebration for formerly enslaved Americans. On June 19, 1865, Major General Gordon Granger led a force of soldiers to Galveston, Texas to announce the Executive Order ending slavery in the American South. That land became Emancipation Park, a name that it still bears.Juneteenth, we celebrate the anniversary of the end of slavery. In one such case, Black community leaders in Houston saved $1,000 to purchase land in 1872 that would be devoted specifically to Juneteenth celebrations, according to the Houston Parks and Recreation Department. That tradition soon spread to other states, but it wasn't uncommon for white people to bar Black people from celebrating in public spaces, forcing Black people to get creative. People have celebrated Juneteenth any way they canĪfter they were freed, some former slaves and their descendants would travel to Galveston annually in honor of Juneteenth. "What the Emancipation Proclamation does that's so important is it begins a creeping process of emancipation where the federal government is now finally taking firm stands to say slavery is wrong and it must end," Bunch said. (And the amendment did not extend to tribal lands.) Still, even though slavery in the States was not abolished until the ratification of the 13th Amendment, the Emancipation Proclamation still played a pivotal role in that process, historian Lonnie Bunch told NPR in 2013. They got away with it because, before winning the war, Union soldiers were largely unable to enforce the Emancipation Proclamation in Southern states. 3, many slave owners in Confederate states simply chose not to tell their slaves about the Emancipation Proclamation and did not honor it. ![]() It was a perilous time for Black people, and some former slaves who were freed or attempted to get free were attacked and killed.įor Confederate states like Texas, even before Juneteenth, there existed a "desire to hold on to that system as long as they could," Walsh explained to NPR.īefore the reading of General Order No. Some would wait until one final harvest was complete, and some would just outright refuse to submit. It was not uncommon for slave owners, unwilling to give up free labor, to refuse to release their slaves until forced to, in person, by a representative of the government, historian Henry Louis Gates Jr. When Granger arrived in Galveston, there still existed around 250,000 slaves and they were not all freed immediately, or even soon. just like that, we were free." Slavery did not end on Juneteenth As Felix Haywood, a former slave, recalled: "Everybody went wild. Enslaved Black people, now free, had ample cause to celebrate.
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