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IMAGE COURTESY OF HISTORY AND ART COLLECTION/ALAMY
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Call it a first taste of freedom. For enslaved people in Texas hearing that they were emancipated after the Civil War, that’s what Juneteenth, celebrated today as a federal holiday, symbolizes.
Black Americans have paused for this moment of joy every June since the late 1800s, but since the summer of 2020 there’s been an uptick in commemorations nationwide.
America’s newest federal holiday has long meant picnics, parades, and prayer, but it also symbolizes a long history of barriers and struggles. (Pictured above, musicians stand before the U.S. flag at a commemoration 35 years after the Civil War.) “Juneteenth is more than a celebration,” Patricia S. Daniels writes for Nat Geo. “It is a signpost to mark 400 years of history that needs to be uncovered, remembered, and accounted for.”
Read the full story here.
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