Killeen Daily Herald, June 11, 2021, Celebrating Juneteenth amid racial inequality
On Juneteenth, June 19, we celebrate Union Army General Gordon Granger’s order to free the people still enslaved in Texas. The holiday marks the effective end of slavery in the United States.
Although President Abraham Lincoln, in his Emancipation Proclamation, banned slavery in all Confederate states 2 1/2 years earlier, it took enforcement by Union troops to actually uproot the practice. As one of the most remote slave states at the time, Texas was in the last wave of enforcement.
Now, over 150 years later, Juneteenth reminds us to be critical of how progress is measured.
Written by Sabrina Terry who is the chief of programs and strategic development at the National Community Reinvestment Coalition. Dedrick Asante-Muhammad is the chief of membership, policy and equity at NCRC and an associate fellow of the Institute for Policy Studies. They wrote this for InsideSources.com.
