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civil rights movement
Juneteenth and the Fight for Justice in Selma and Beyond
Juneteenth is a reminder of why the march for liberty and justice is not over, but a moment to recommit to the work ahead.
Jun 19, 2025
At Foot Soldiers Park, Juneteenth is more than a date on the calendar. It’s a declaration, a call to always remember, to resist, and to continue to reimagine what freedom looks like.
For the last four years Juneteenth has become a commemoration of historic significance that has become more powerful and more necessary. As a community, we gather not just to honor history, we gather to face the present and to envision a better future rooted in truth, justice, and collective power.
Juneteenth commemorates June 19, 1865, the day the last enslaved people in Galveston, Texas were finally told they were free—more than two years after the Emancipation Proclamation. That delay wasn’t a historical oversight, it was an intentional strategy of suppression that today, still shows up through the systems we confront daily.
We celebrate because freedom was never handed to us, we claimed it in 1865, in 1965, and we must claim it today.
Today one thing is clear, slavery didn’t end, it evolved. It’s been institutionalized in the form of mass incarceration, labor exploitation, generational poverty, voter suppression, and policies that consistently and disproportionately harm Black and Brown communities. One-hundred and sixty years later, Black and Brown people are still profiled, surveilled, underpaid, and denied full access to justice.
And yet, we are still here. Still resisting. Still building our communities up. Still rising.
Our hometown Selma is ground zero for the struggle for voting rights and the fight for the socioeconomic prosperity of people of color in our country. We both span two generations of Black people in Selma. One of us was among the 600 foot soldiers who bravely marched across the Edmund Pettus Bridge and demanded voting rights for Black people—ultimately leading to the passage of the Voting Rights Act in 1965. The other one of us was raised to carry that spirit of activism and determination to protect and preserve those rights for generations to come.
In 2021, at a historic moment for our country, we founded Foot Soldiers Park to preserve Selma’s legacy, memorialize the stories of the everyday people who fueled the civil rights movement, and to position the city’s historical significance into an engine for liberation, economic development, and racial justice.
With a mission rooted in the legacy of Selma’s foot soldiers, we don’t shy away from the truth, we walk directly into it. Because that’s where change is born and transformation begins. We don’t just preserve history, we activate it. We innovate. We organize. We lead.
Juneteenth is a reminder of why the march for liberty and justice is not over, but a moment to recommit to the work ahead.
Despite Selma’s historical significance in shaping the very fabric of this country, the majority-Black city is still struggling to overcome generations of institutional racism and overall neglect. Forty-one percent of the population lives in poverty. Thirty-percent are suffering from food insecurity, and an abysmal $27,000 a year is the average income in the city.
When we founded Foot Soldiers Park, we had a clear goal—to transform Selma; ask hard questions; and set a bold agenda to build generational wealth, protect our civil rights, and empower our youth to lead. We are campaigning to fund Selma’s first-ever community and education center, and foot soldiers memorial. This urgently needed hub will be a beacon for leaders, students, and educators to weave the rich tapestry of Selma’s civil rights movement and serve as a conduit for ongoing scholarship in this critical field. As our civil rights are again under attack, we’ll serve as a catalyst for community-led action and civic participation, healing and restoration, youth engagement and activation—building the bench for the next generation of political, business, and social justice leaders.
This Juneteenth we need to face the truth—there will be no erasure. What our history shows is how resilience can lead to transformation. Generation after generation we have turned pain into purpose, and memory into motivation to design systems that move us closer to justice.
As Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. said, “A right delayed is a right denied.” Juneteenth reminds us that justice delayed is not justice at all. Freedom withheld is not freedom for all. And the arc of the moral universe does not bend unless we bend it. Together.
For us Juneteenth is not just symbolic. It is sacred. It is strategic. It is where truth, joy, memory, and action converge.
Every year we celebrate because our people’s story does not end in chains. We celebrate because our ancestors did more than survive; they organized, educated, resisted, and loved. We celebrate because freedom was never handed to us, we claimed it in 1865, in 1965, and we must claim it today.
In Selma, we never rest and we don’t sugarcoat the truth. We are the foot soldiers of 1965 and the foot soldiers of tomorrow—as agents of change, we will keep marching forward.
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Trump Is Dragging America Back to Pre-Civil Rights Norms
Permission to dehumanize comes from the top down. This is what the Trump era continues to teach us, as well as how politically convenient it is.
Jun 07, 2025
Basically, everyone knows that “making America great again” means making America racist again—making racism the cultural norm again, unlocking the cage of political correctness and freeing, you know, regular Americans to strut again in a sense of superiority.
This cultural norm was “stolen” by the civil rights movement. Prior to the changes the movement wrought—I’m old enough to remember those days—polite ladies at church could say, “Oh my, that’s very white of you.” And lynchings were not only normal but quasi-legal, or so it seemed, far more likely to result in postcards than convictions.
To worship racism is to deny full humanity not simply to “them” but to yourself.
Permission to dehumanize comes from the top down. This is what the Trump era continues to teach us, as well as how politically convenient it is. Dehumanizing a particular group of people—turning them into “the enemy” of the moment—is such a useful governing tool. And creating the enemy isn’t limited to waging war.
America, America! Half democracy, half slave-owning autocracy: God bless our founding racism, let’s make America as great as it used to be. Here’s how this is done, as Axios reports:
In a tense meeting last week, top Trump aide Stephen Miller and Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem demanded that immigration agents seek to arrest 3,000 people a day... according to two sources familiar with the meeting.
Why it matters: The new target is triple the number of daily arrests that agents were making in the early days of Trump’s term—and suggests the president’s top immigration officials are full-steam ahead in pushing for mass deportations.
No wonder Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) tagents seem like such brutal racists. It’s their job. Perhaps most of them believe in the moral necessity of their work—getting “illegals” out of the country, even if, oh gosh, they’re here legally. But even if they don’t. this is the work they have to do.
It’s not too difficult to scrape past the superficial terms “legal” and “citizenship” to spot the collective dehumanization of brown people. Americans capable of understanding life only in us-vs.-them—me-vs.-you—terms are getting what they long for.
This was exemplified in a recent CNN story about a surge in arrests of fake ICE agents—ordinary American guys harassing, assaulting, and/or pretending to arrest brown people. In one incident, a South Carolina white guy stopped his car on a rural road, blocking the car of brown men behind him. One of the victims recorded the incident on his cellphone.
“You all got caught!” the fake agent blathered. “Where are you from, Mexico? You from Mexico? You’re going back to Mexico!”
He then grabbed the keys from the ignition and started jiggling them in the driver’s face as he mocked his accent. One of the passengers made a call on his cellphone, causing the fake agent to admonish him: “Now don’t be speaking that pig-Latin in my fucking country!” He then slapped the phone out of his hand.
Ah, the enemy! What the incident makes public is not simply the sense of fear the Trumpers are instilling in ordinary Americans, but the fact that they’re returning those ordinary Americans to a sense of... uh, self-worth. We’re better than they are.
But of course this creates fear among everyone in the group declared to be non-American: “the enemy.” As Maribel Hernández Rivera of the American Civil Liberties Union noted to CNN after watching the video:
What we’re seeing here is we have leadership at the top that dehumanizes people who are immigrants and now this is the outcome of that dehumanizing. You end up having a violation of people’s rights, people see and hear this and they feel emboldened to go against immigrants.
Yes, this is part of who we are. Us-vs.-them hatred, fear, and contempt is basic humanity, simplified to its lowest common denominator. It’s so easy to seize a sense of hatred and contempt for an “other”—for someone who seems different. But to worship racism is to deny full humanity not simply to “them” but to yourself. You’re living as half of who you are, locked solely in your certainties—in what you know or think you know—and denying yourself the chance to learn and grow. What someone prone to racism really fears isn’t “the other”—he may well worship having a clearly defined enemy—but, rather, life’s complexity: the unknown.
Removing books from libraries is one example of this—you know, books that make people “uncomfortable,” because they push them beyond their certainties (racist or otherwise). So is the Trump-ICE invasion of universities: arresting and deporting students who make, let us say, politically incorrect statements about Israel’s genocide in Gaza. As author Christine Greer asked, “What is the point of a university if we have homogeneity of thought and silence?”
Interestingly, we’re also witnessing a seemingly opposite sort of educational confrontation, as Trump education secretary Linda McMahon recently defended a New York state high school’s right to maintain an Indigenous American name for its sports teams: “the Chiefs.” The state had imposed a ban on stereotypical mascot names. As a spokesperson for the National Congress of American Indians said, “These depictions are not tributes—they are rooted in racism, cultural appropriation, and intentional ignorance.”
No matter! America has a right to maintain its stereotypes, that is to say, keep them in public view, front and center. Toss in a few hoots while you’re at it.
I believe this much: We’ll continue to evolve beyond this smirking certainty, regardless how difficult it will be to do so and regardless how long it takes.
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Fascism Is Here. Political Education Is How We Fight Back
As anti-education laws sweep the nation, political education offers communities the tools to resist authoritarianism, reclaim truth, and build collective power
Jun 01, 2025
Banned books. Silenced teachers. Erased histories. These aren’t education policies—they're authoritarian tactics. As of December 31, 2022, 28 states have introduced at least one anti-education measure at the state level, including legislation, executive directives, and policies. Of these, 16 states have specifically enacted anti-education legislation. Concurrently, we’re facing a new wave of fascism in the United States.
The executive branch under Trump is eroding checks and balances, impacting the civil and political rights of all people residing in the country, citizen or non-citizen alike. This moment demands that we fight for political education, the process of learning about power, systems of oppression, and collective action, so people can understand the world around them and organize to transform it. While it may feel like history repeating itself—from Mussolini’s Italy to McCarthy’s America—this moment is ours to confront. Political education is the antidote to help us resist fascism in all facets of society.
While it may feel like history repeating itself—from Mussolini’s Italy to McCarthy’s America—this moment is ours to confront.
II. The Crisis We Face
The backlash to the 2020 racial justice uprisings has come swiftly and systematically. During the 2020 uprisings, we saw waves of education online and in the streets. In the wake of the largest protests in U.S. history, right-wing groups mobilized to stop the political awakening of a generation. Christopher Rufo, alongside organizations like Moms for Liberty and Parents Defending Education, helped spearhead anti-CRT bills and book ban campaigns aimed at silencing truth-telling in schools. Even before these attacks, the U.S. faced a civic education crisis. Most Americans lacked a basic understanding of how their government works or the history that shaped it. These bills will exacerbate that crisis for decades, ensuring that American citizens are kept in the dark about their history and understanding how that history has brought the country to the current moment. This assault on truth is intentional and by design—it's a deliberate strategy by right-wing operatives to suppress knowledge and prevent resistance. Without this basic knowledge, Americans lack the tools and awareness to know how to create equity and justice in our society.
III. What Is Political Education—and Why It Matters
Political education is not just learning about politics—it’s learning how to change them. Although this is a perilous moment in American history, we aren’t powerless against forces that would keep us in the dark. Political education is how communities can begin to exercise their agency and take back their power. Yet many people have never heard of political education, or confuse it with basic civics. Political education develops the ability to recognize power and how it is wielded, builds collective power, and equips people with the skills to take action to create transformative change. With classrooms becoming restricted spaces, political education is something that can happen outside of the classroom. It can happen in book clubs, kitchen table conversations with neighbors and friends, livestreams, theaters, and more.
Political education is not just learning about politics—it’s learning how to change them.
Members of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) organized Freedom Schools in 1964 to teach Black youth about Black history, political power, and the struggle for civil rights, creating a wave of lifelong organizers working towards Black liberation. The Highlander Center, a training center for organizers and civil rights leaders, many of whom led the Montgomery Bus Boycott and shaped the strategies of the broader Civil Rights Movement. The 2020 uprisings sparked a wave of political education online. Abolitionist organizations and organizers like Critical Resistance, Mariame Kaba, and others educated people online, offering options beyond policing and incarceration. Many of these individuals and groups created online content like Instagram explainers, live teach-ins, podcasts, and toolkits. Political education created spaces for people to learn in solidarity and build a shared vision of a world where no one is left without the resources they need to thrive.
IV. Political Education as Resistance
The political education that arose out of the 2020 uprisings is something that right-wing politicians and figures who are leading the anti-education policies want to prevent in the future. When people come together to learn with and from one another, not only are they expanding their awareness and possibilities for the future, but they also form communities of solidarity that make transformation possible.
The political education that arose out of the 2020 uprisings is something that right-wing politicians and figures who are leading the anti-education policies want to prevent in the future.
Successful political education that leads to action includes a few key ingredients. The first is connecting history to the current political moment to understand how we got to the present. It requires awareness of local, national, and international history and naming the systems of oppression that are entrenched in the present day – white supremacy, capitalism, colonialism, patriarchy, ableism, and authoritarianism.
The next ingredient is helping learners develop critical consciousness, a term coined by the educational theorist Paulo Freire. Critical consciousness helps learners gain a deeper understanding of the world through analyzing systems and structures of power. Developing critical consciousness connects personal experiences to broader social and political forces.
Fascism is the most potent when silent—when it rewrites textbooks, silences educators, and erases memory.
Another key component of political education is a proactive learning community. Learners are encouraged to be both students and educators in a political education space, prioritizing participatory dialogue over lectures. This helps build collective analysis, group processing, conflict and resolution skills, and problem-solving. By generating knowledge collectively, learners realize that transformative change isn’t driven by individual leaders, but by collective action. The ultimate goal of political education is to move people from awareness to group action in order to change their material conditions and environment.
V. “Where to Start Your Political Education”
Despite attempts to stifle truth and education in the classroom, groups are providing political education nationwide, doing their part to develop new movement leaders ready to strengthen movements.
- Zinn Education Project – The Zinn Education Project is one of the organizations across the country raising awareness of the anti-education bills across the nation, and also providing teaching materials on teaching Reconstruction, Climate Change, Palestine, and much more.
- The People’s Forum – The People’s Forum is another organization specializing in political education with study groups, film screenings, events, and more.
- Slow Factory’s Open Edu – Slow Factory, an organization that has a bustling social media presence, hosts Open Edu a series that focuses on political education on topics of human rights, climate justice, and collective liberation.
- Local mutual aid groups and community centers – There are local organizations across the nation providing workshops, study groups, and other third spaces where people can connect, learn, and struggle together.
VI. Final Message: You Have a Role
Fascism is the most potent when silent—when it rewrites textbooks, silences educators, and erases memory. The ultimate goal of these anti-education bills is to enable more fascism and to stop people and movements from mobilizing into action. If you feel powerless, unsure how to act, or outraged by the attacks on education, the most powerful thing you can do is to prioritize learning in community to create change. When truth is under attack, teaching and learning become an act of resistance, and we need all of us in that fight.
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