On Wednesday, many people will observe a recently made federal holiday: Juneteenth. This date has long-standing roots, of course. It arose particularly from the announcement of freedom to slaves in Texas on June 19, 1865. It came to symbolize black people’s broader battle for liberty and its blessings in the United States.
As with nearly all things these days, there are attempts to make this day one for partisan attack. Many on the Left use it to smear conservatives as inherently bigoted. Many on the Right dismiss the day entirely as a progressive ploy.
We should resist these efforts with better endeavors of our own. Juneteenth has a legitimate and welcome place in our civic commemorations. It reminds us both of America’s fallibility and its promise.
Juneteenth shows us the country’s fallibility in displaying the evils of slavery and its long shadow. We must not blink at that past, however long it drifts into the past.
At the same time, Juneteenth points to America’s promise. This country did not create slavery, neither as an institution nor our own participation in it. Human bondage already possessed a history stretching back thousands of years, and our own slavery began when we were colonies under British control. However, America did end slavery. It did so with much bloodshed in the form of a horrific and long Civil War. It did so not to change its principles but to realize them in a fuller fashion.
The American mind, Thomas Jefferson said, was expressed in the Declaration of Independence. In that document, we committed ourselves to human equality, natural human rights, and the consent of the people in their government. All were noble goals but ones incompletely achieved in 1776 and again in 1787. Juneteenth reminds us that the Declaration was both an end and a beginning. It was an end in setting up a permanent standard of justice by which we will measure ourselves so long as this country exists. It was a beginning in that it launched us on a political voyage seeking to better realize those goods in our own laws, structures, and society.
The end of slavery comprised an enormous step in our practice toward conforming to our principles. It took the blight of slavery, with its vicious degradation of human beings, and condemned it in the strongest terms people could use — constitutional amendment. It did not end the quest for equality and liberty. But it showed what we are capable of and affirmed we will continue to seek these goods for all people.
On this Juneteenth, we should steep ourselves in the words of a man who perhaps exemplified this fight for freedom better than any other American: Frederick Douglass. Born into slavery, he escaped to freedom to become one of the North’s leading abolitionist voices. A brilliant mind and a fiery speechmaker, he proved fearless and tireless in the cause of liberating his brothers and sisters still in bondage.
In his 1852 speech, What to the Slave is the Fourth of July?, he captures the spirit of Juneteenth in a helpful way. He criticizes America for, at the time, making July 4 a white holiday, celebrating liberty while reminding black Americans of the freedom so many of them lacked. But he also noted the promise that “interpreted as it ought to be interpreted, the Constitution is a GLORIOUS LIBERTY DOCUMENT.” It was a North Star to guide us.
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Douglass lived to see this glorious liberty document made more complete in its protection of freedom. He would help America win the Civil War and pass the 13th, 14th, and 15th Amendments. Together, those efforts secured liberty in law for millions. Though it would take another century for that effort to end segregation, it remains a milestone in human history in the advancement toward justice.
Let us celebrate with Douglass this Juneteenth. And let us strive for its greater fulfillment in the year to come.
Adam Carrington is an associate professor of politics at Hillsdale College.