On Thursday, US President Joe Biden signed a bill that makes June 19th a federal holiday. The day will be known as the Juneteenth National Independence Day. Even though the US Senate is evenly divided between 50 Democratic Senators and 50 Republican Senators, each and every US Senator approved this bill. This is the first holiday to be made into a federal holiday since the Martin Luther King, Jr. Day was signed into law in 1983.
Many people within the USA do not even know what Juneteenth is all about because this day was rarely placed in curriculums by history teachers throughout the country. Juneteenth refers to June 19, 1865 when Union Army General Gordon Granger announced in Galveston, TX that the slaves in that state were officially free.
Although President Abraham Lincoln signed the Emancipation Proclamation in 1862 outlawed slavery throughout the entire country, the news did not reach the Black slaves in Texas until three years later. The reason is that the slave owners did not relay this information to their slaves that they were free. Thus, the slave owners defrauded these slaves in Texas out of three years of wages. We now see history repeating itself as corporations now do everything within their power to keep the wages of their employees as low as possible in order to increase their profit margins.
Since Juneteenth was absolutely the last day of slavery, we should all celebrate this fact because nobody deserves to be oppressed. We should all be grateful that we are free in the USA because there are countries throughout the world in which the leaders continue to keep their constituents under authoritarian rule, such as North Korea, Myanmar, and Eritrea.
Since Saturday is the first official Juneteenth, there is a Juneteenth Celebration weekend scheduled in Joliet, IL. The event will begin on Saturday at 1 PM until dusk at Nowell Park, and is sponsored by U.C. Me Expressions Custom Apparel. The event will be filled with vendors selling food along with a few motivational speeches that will be given. Fireworks will then close the event out for Saturday night. Since this event will be totally new to some, the speeches will give insight of what Juneteenth is all about.
However, the festivities for the weekend are not over. On Sunday, there will be a Father's Day Car Show in the parking lot of Longshots Bar & Grill in Joliet from 4 PM until 8 PM CST.
Having the Juneteenth holiday celebration will allow for people to reflect upon the fact that they are free and that nobody should allow for anyone else to oppress them. As social justice has become a trending topic since last summer with all of the protests after the murder of George Floyd, we must not allow for this holiday to become only performative in nature. The Black Lives Matter movement helped to shed light upon the importance that every person should have a modicum of respect towards each other.
However, a Black person's life should not only matter when a Black person is killed by a police officer. A Black person's life should matter to the point that Black people stop killing each other as well. It's outrageous that Black people make up around 16% of the US population, but commit around 51% of the murders in the country. This ratio is totally out of proportion.
Hopefully, the celebration of Juneteenth each year will lead to a change of thinking in which people no longer live their life with a slave-like mentality. We are all free! Happy Juneteenth!
If you are interested in going, the address to Nowell Park is 199 Mills Road, and the address to Longshots is 1609 W. Jefferson Street. Both locations are in Joliet, IL.
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