Everything you need to know about Juneteenth, the new federal holiday
June 17, 2021
“As a kid, I always looked forward to the Juneteenth festival my mom took me to. Growing up in Birmingham, in a Black neighborhood, going to a Black school, we usually learned Black History in the context of a struggle—against Jim Crow, against enslavement, against the systems that sought to obliterate Blackness and Black people,” said Danielle Hurd-Wilson, Interim Deputy Director of Field and Programs at the nonprofit URGE: Unite for Reproductive & Gender Equity, in a statement. “But the Juneteenth celebrations I went to growing up were centered around the joy of liberation and the vast, vast possibilities that lay in front of Black people who were to no longer be treated as property.”
