Op-Ed: Without a U.S. plan for reparations, Juneteenth is a hollow national holiday (via latimesopinion)
Sorry, America. There are better ways to commemorate the end of slavery than establishing Juneteenth, which is also known as Emancipation Day, as a federal holiday. It perpetuates the falsehood that June 19, 1865, marked the end of slavery in the U.S.
Frederick Douglass, the great champion of abolition, celebrated Emancipation Day on Aug. 1, the day in 1834 when Britain enacted a sweeping proclamation freeing all slaves in the British Empire. A close reading of the proclamation shows it only freed slaves in Confederate states, which never recognized Lincoln’s authority anyway. While former slaves in Texas celebrated their freedom, slavery was still legal in Delaware, which President Biden represented in the Senate for many years — and where enslaved men and women had to await the ratification of the 13th Amendment on Dec. 6, 1865, for their freedom.
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