Perspectives: Juneteenth 2020
Summary from the AllSides News Team
Featured Coverage of this Story
From the Center
What is Juneteenth?
Friday marks the 55th anniversary of Juneteenth, a holiday commemorating the abolishment of slavery that takes place every year on June 19.
The date refers not to the end of legal slavery in the United States but to the gap in time before everyone heard the news.
“It’s actually an important event, an important time. But nobody had ever heard of it,” President Trump said of Juneteenth this week in an interview with The Wall Street Journal.
Many schools don’t teach the history of Juneteenth and it is not recognized...
From the Right
Juneteenth and Modern-Day Slavery
Juneteenth should be a reminder to never see any group of humans as non-persons. It never works out well for the ones victimized by such evil arrogance. This holiday commemorates the eventual announcement to slaves in Texas, on June 19th 1865, that President Abraham Lincoln had set them free. The Emancipation Proclamation was issued over two years prior on January 1st, 1863. Isn’t this how truth works sometimes? It has to get over so many obstacles to finally be heard and bring the freedom that is its very nature....
From the Left
Why Juneteenth Matters
Neither Abraham Lincoln nor the Republican Party freed the slaves. They helped set freedom in motion and eventually codified it into law with the 13th Amendment, but they were not themselves responsible for the end of slavery. They were not the ones who brought about its final destruction.
Who freed the slaves? The slaves freed the slaves.
“Slave resistance,” as the historian Manisha Sinha points out in “The Slave’s Cause: A History of Abolition,” “lay at the heart of the abolition movement.”
“Prominent slave revolts marked the turn toward immediate...
AllSides Picks
May 17th, 2024
Discuss & Debate race and racism
Community Conversations for Election 2024
May 21 at 12pm PT / 3pm ET Living Room ConversationsMore News about Race and Racism from the Left, Center and Right
From the Left
From the Center
From the Right
