Freedom Day
The function of freedom is to free someone else.
TONI MORRISON
Yesterday was not only Father’s Day, it was also Juneteenth. Today is the official observance of our newest federal holiday. Juneteenth is described on npr.org:
Juneteenth, also known as "Emancipation Day" or "Freedom Day," Juneteenth commemorates June 19, 1865 when federal troops arrived in Galveston, Texas and gave word to enslaved African Americans that they were free — more than two years after the Emancipation Proclamation was signed. The holiday has been celebrated by many Black families for generations, but began to gain wider attention in 2020 after the murder of George Floyd and Breonna Taylor.
I was born 100 years after that first Juneteenth, a white child living in white rural America. I didn’t hear of Juneteenth until the murder of George Floyd. And I was a high school social studies teacher for ten years. I have embraced my unknowing and set out to learn more about my own white privilege and about the neglected, hard truth of American history. It’s something. It’s a start. Reading books, being part of discussion groups, seeing places like the Legacy Museum in Montgomery, Alabama, participating in a group at school that is striving to make headway in terms of equity and inclusion. It all matters.
I give my parents ample credit for what they taught us about human dignity and that we didn’t hear racial intolerance. We were insulated though. So Toni Morrison is asking you and I to do more. What can I do? I can write. I wrote this piece in the featured image months ago. See each other. Hear each other. It’s a start.
Invisible
The deepest pain we can inflict on another is to be unseeing, unhearing, rendering them invisible.
It erases their worth, diminishes ours.
