Juneteenth: The Activist Class Is Never Satisfied

Within a matter of hours of President Joe Biden signing into law the Juneteenth National Independence Day Act and, thereby, creating a new federal holiday—the first such addition to the calendar since Martin Luther King Jr. Day was added in 1983—activists returned to their now-familiar refrain: “It's great, but it's not enough.” By 10 o’clock the next morning, Jade Magnus Ogunnaike, a senior campaign director at the advocacy group Color Of Change, published an opinion column at The Root under the headline “Juneteenth Is More Than a Federal Holiday. We Need Reparations Now.” This followed a similar piece published two days before on the Brookings Institution’s website arguing that making Juneteenth a federal holiday should best be viewed as an opportunity to again push for reparations for black Americans. Also chiming in to this effect was Rep. Cori Bush (D-MO): “It’s Juneteenth AND reparations.”