Celebrate Juneteenth — but acknowledge that slavery’s stain lingers

This is the first year the entire nation observes Juneteenth — an event tied the end of slavery in the United States. The newest federal holiday builds off long-running observations, a few dating back to emancipation itself, with the first June 19th celebration marking the day that Texas, the last state to end the Civil War, officially recognized slavery’s end.

This year, the Juneteenth holiday has been shifted to Monday. But the party has already started in many Florida cities. Long-running festivals and parades in Daytona Beach, Jacksonville, St. Petersburg and other areas are being joined by new events. Many Florida cities, including Orlando, have declared an official holiday.

“The celebration of Juneteenth reminds each of us of the precious promises of freedom, equality, and opportunity which are at the core of the American Dream,” Orlando Mayor Jerry Demings said in a proclamation last week.

But behind the lofty words, the parties, the food and the joy of community are brutal truths — and the understanding that this celebration is not just about one day.

It’s about a malevolence that infected a new nation’s economy, its administration of justice, its very humanity, for nearly a century — about oppression that lingered for decades, even after the fatal blow was struck. It’s about generations of people, born on U.S. soil but denied the rights this country was founded to claim. It’s about parents raising their children with a desperate hope that their lives would be freer, their opportunities less constrained — and the chilling fear that they would stumble on the rubble of enslavement, oppression and hatred.

There is no single date to circle and say “This is when slavery ended in the United States.” But there is a need to come together and remind ourselves that in today’s America, we have rejected its hateful miasma. That’s a hard assertion to make, in a year where politicians are still exploiting the ghosts of racism to rally far-right voters who view the past with nostalgia instead of revulsion.

We need to remember the truth. On our website today, you’ll find a gallery of images from Florida’s archives that remind you how casually slavery, racism and segregation were once accepted here.

But we must also see the present with clear eyes. This year, Black Floridians found new grief in the spectacle of Florida leaders like Gov. Ron DeSantis mocking “woke” culture. They heard no acknowledgement of the years that Florida’s leaders slumbered, indifferent to people who could not be treated in their nearest hospital, whose children could not attend the nearest and best schools, to families still locked in a deliberate cycle of poverty and incarceration that disproportionately targets Black Americans.

They also watched DeSantis shift lines on Florida’s congressional map with the intent of erasing their ability to elect representatives to look like them. They saw lawmakers pass tough restrictions on classroom discussion of racism — and then almost immediately, they saw the official policy of ignorance overspill its own boundaries, with state officials challenging books for simply mentioning race.

Can anyone believe this struggle is over? It is not over. We need this day to remind ourselves that equality is, in many ways, a new and fragile concept for our nation. To realize that the United States still bears the scars of its original sin, and that many of our fellow Americans carry its burdens — yes, white people too, who have lived in a diminished society, with many unaware how much potential has been wasted, and what heights we might have scaled if we united sooner.

We can’t change the past, but we can fight for a better future. And the Juneteenth celebrations are a wonderful place to start.