Annette Gordon-Reed

When Annette Gordon-Reed first heard of non-Texans celebrating Juneteenth, she was simply annoyed, said H.W. Brands in The New York Times. Growing up in East Texas, the future Harvard historian had always gathered with family on June 19 for a picnic with plenty of red soda and firecrackers, and so marking the day in 1865 when enslaved Texans were freed felt like a Lone Star–only thing. But Gordon-Reed, who won a 2009 Pulitzer for a work that illuminated Thomas Jefferson’s relationship with Sally Hemings, has now written a slim book, On Juneteenth, that complicates the history of the day while explaining how deepening her perspective convinced her that it should be a national holiday. “This is a day to celebrate a human rights victory,” she says. “This is not just about Black Texans. It was a major development in human progress—for the country, for the world.”

Gordon-Reed’s book asks readers to confront a hard truth about Juneteenth, said Angela Ards in Texas Monthly. The end of slavery in Texas was special in part because Texas had been founded to extend plantation slavery into what was then a Mexican province. A century later, in 1965, Gordon-Reed herself helped push Texas forward another step when she became the first Black student to enroll in a white grade school in the town of Conroe. Mostly, she felt at ease despite her isolation, said Lisa Gray in the Houston Chronicle. “My teachers were wonderful,” Gordon-Reed says. “The kids, some were good and some were not.” Only a longer perspective allowed her to see that a deep racial division lingered. “It was,” she says, “sort of the background noise.”