In 2021, following the protests and racial reckoning of 2020, President Joe Biden signed the Juneteenth National Independence Day Act, officially making Juneteenth a federal holiday. Just a year earlier, many Americans — including some Black Americans — were unfamiliar with Juneteenth. Shows like “Black-ish” and “Atlanta” served as unexpected teachers.
The holiday entered the national spotlight in 2020 after backlash erupted over then-President Donald Trump’s decision to hold a June 19 campaign rally in Tulsa, Oklahoma — just miles from the site of the 1921 race massacre. The rally would be delayed a day.
Nike, Twitter, Target and a handful of major companies made Juneteenth a paid holiday even before it became federal law. In the years since then, celebrations, cookouts and parades have sprung up across the country.
Two years ago, AJC columnist Nedra Rhone took a weeklong tour of Black history museums across the South — driven by how much she, like many Americans, had a lot to learn. Juneteenth became a time of reckoning, reflection and education. It meant something — and still does.
With growing political resistance to diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) efforts, cities and companies nationwide have scaled back or canceled Juneteenth support. Organizers of Juneteenth Atlanta Fest say the event nearly didn’t happen this year. Military and corporate sponsors that once supported the festival financially backed out.
A wave of historical reckoning — renaming schools and military bases, revisiting classroom curricula and canceling university programs — has since collided with cuts to DEI funding at the state and federal level. Trump’s executive order titled “Restoring Truth and Sanity to American History” further signaled a shift. This year, Juneteenth feels different. In some places, more subdued.
Independence Day and Juneteenth reflect different chapters of America’s story — different timelines of freedom. And depending on who you ask, there are many versions of what freedom or independence really means. For some, the Fourth of July has never felt like a holiday to celebrate. The same has been said for Juneteenth.
But Juneteenth, unlike the Fourth, is still being written.
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