Juneteenth and July 4th: Teaching About Freedom in America

“JUNETEENTH!”

Flyers shout this word along the streets of Tulsa, Oklahoma.

It’s 2018. I have just moved to Tulsa from New York City, and I have never heard of Juneteenth. When I crossed the Mason-Dixon line, I found myself in another world.

Juneteenth, locals informed me, is African American Independence Day. It commemorates June 19th, 1865 when Major General Gordon Granger came to Texas and brought word that the enslaved were free — two years after the Emancipation Proclamation. Many believe that the news had been deliberately withheld in order to keep slavery in effect.

On that June day, African Americans walked off of plantations and into their new lives as free people. Many headed west to Oklahoma and established all-Black towns and settlements as well as Black Wall Street, a prosperous center of Black wealth, commerce, and entrepreneurship.

But the struggle for freedom was far from over. In 1921, Black Wall Street was destroyed in a racially-motivated massacre. The news coverage of this event was erased from library records in attempts to cover it up. Today, the 1921 Tulsa Race Massacre Centennial Commission is working hard to ensure the visibility of that history as well as its utilization in present-day initiatives.