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Juneteenth Was Not Freely Given—It Was Won
On Juneteenth's call to justice and the U.S. Supreme Court's role in the eternal quest for Black liberation.
Jun 19, 2024
Juneteenth resonates as a symbol of freedom and resilience, encapsulating the enduring struggle against oppression and the relentless pursuit of equality. It’s a day of remembrance, celebration, and reflection on the journey from bondage to liberation. Beyond its cultural significance, Juneteenth challenges the United States to confront its history of racial injustice and commit to building a future where every citizen enjoys true freedom and equality under the law. Juneteenth is a verb.
In the annals of American history, the Supreme Court played a pivotal yet contradictory role in the quest for Black liberation. As we reflect on our Juneteenth journey, it is evident that the Court has been both a catalyst for progress and an obstacle to justice.
From the infamous Dred Scott decision of 1857, which denied citizenship to African Americans, to the landmark Brown v. Board of Education ruling in 1954, which dismantled the legal basis for racial segregation, the Court's decisions have swung like a pendulum, shaping the contours of racial justice in America.
The Supreme Court's rulings have occasionally propelled the nation toward equality. The Brown decision 70 years ago, declaring state laws establishing separate public schools for Black and white students to be unconstitutional, ignited the Civil Rights Movement. This was a moment when the Court stood on the right side of history, challenging entrenched systems of racial oppression and setting a precedent for future advances in civil rights.
As we look to the future, let us draw inspiration from the resilience and courage of those who have fought for justice before us—those who fought for freedom from bondage.
However, the path to Black liberation is not linear, and the Court has often regressed, reinforcing racial hierarchies and undermining progress. The 2013 Shelby County v. Holder decision, which invalidated key provisions of the Voting Rights Act of 1965, serves as a stark reminder. By weakening federal oversight of voting laws, the Court opened the door to a new era of voter suppression, disproportionately affecting Black communities.
This duality underscores a broader truth: legal victories, while crucial, are insufficient on their own. They must be accompanied by sustained activism and grassroots mobilization to ensure that the principles of justice are translated into lived realities. The Court's decisions, influenced by the prevailing political and social climates, highlight the importance of a vigilant and engaged citizenry.
Recent Supreme Court rulings on affirmative action vividly highlight the Court's profound limitations placed on Black liberation, spanning both public and private sectors, with innovations from Black women entrepreneurs poised for continued suppression. Amid decisions that perpetuate systemic inequalities, we confront entrenched patterns of injustice and demand an unwavering judiciary committed to equality and justice for all.
In the context of ongoing struggles against systemic racism and for Black lives, the Supreme Court's role remains pivotal. Advocating for a judiciary that reflects the diverse experiences and needs of the American populace is imperative. This necessitates championing justices who possess not only legal acumen but also a steadfast commitment to social justice.
The conversation about the Court's role in Black liberation must extend beyond the judiciary itself. It requires a holistic approach that includes legislative and policy reforms, educational initiatives, democracy and economic policies aimed at dismantling the structural barriers that perpetuate racial inequities.
It is through the collective efforts of individuals, communities, and public institutions that we can hope to achieve a more just and equitable society.
As we look to the future, let us draw inspiration from the resilience and courage of those who have fought for justice before us—those who fought for freedom from bondage. Juneteenth was not freely given—it was won.
The journey toward Black liberation is far from over, and the Supreme Court, while a powerful institution, is but one arena to reform in this ongoing struggle. It is through the collective efforts of individuals, communities, and public institutions that we can hope to achieve a more just and equitable society.
On this Juneteenth, our task is to remain vigilant, to hold our leaders accountable, and to continue the fight for a society where justice is not merely an ideal, but a reality for all.
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A Juneteenth Reflection on America’s Unfinished Business
This year, as we celebrate the end of chattel slavery in the United States, we must remember the work that Frederick Douglass called upon us all to do remains unfinished.
Jun 18, 2024
“What, to the American slave, is your 4th of July?” asked Frederick Douglass in his Fourth of July Oration in 1852. “I answer: a day that reveals to him, more than all other days in the year, the gross injustice and cruelty” of America.
Douglass’s speech remains among the most powerful and poignant in United States history more than a century and a half later. With the Civil War nearly a decade away, and the system of chattel slavery still going strong throughout the South and powering the economy throughout the country, Douglass pointed with undeniable clarity at the “venomous creature [that] is nursing at the tender breast of your youthful republic.”
As we celebrate Juneteenth in 2024, the work that Douglass called upon us all to do remains unfinished. The Civil War, the Emancipation Proclamation, and the Reconstruction Amendments formally put an end to the widespread practice of enslavement of Black people in this country. But the work of reconstructing our society and creating the truly equitable and free society promised in our founding documents has a long way to go.
Today we have the job of coming to grips with our history and charting a new path for those who come after us.
That is why on this Juneteenth, we should all ask: What, to us, is Juneteenth? For all of us, and especially for the Black community, it is a day of joyful celebration, marking the anniversary of the Emancipation Proclamation, as it has been for a century and a half. It marks the end of that “venomous creature” in the republic. To be sure, each one of us should celebrate that important day in 1865, as the Black community did so memorably in Texas that year.
But on Juneteenth, we should also remember that while the snake may have been slain, too much of its venom remains in our system. The venom still takes the form of racism, racial inequity, and the enduring power of white supremacy.
What, to each of us today, is Juneteenth? For those of us in the white community of the United States, I see it as a call to action to do our part to continue the work of reconstruction. We can and should imagine a truly equitable, multiracial America—one we have never before encountered but one which remains a real possibility. There is a fierce pushback against this work today, but this is a pushback we must resist as we continue the unfinished work of Reconstruction.
Like many white Americans whose families have been in the United States for a long time, and in fact came to these shores before the nation even existed, my family has both been involved in the business of enslaving others and has fought for the end of slavery. As Douglass pointed out in his soaring Fourth of July oration, ancestors of mine have done terrible things to others in the name of Christianity, in pursuit of money, and out of ignorance and hate. Others have valiantly fought against friends and families to create a better, fairer society.
Today we have the job of coming to grips with our history and charting a new path for those who come after us. That is why white people must join with others in the work of making our communities and institutions more diverse. Those of us who identify as white and male have a particular obligation to reflect on Juneteenth and consider how we can use what we have to be part of overcoming in the name of a brighter, more sustainable future. We have power to wield, and should wield it, in making our economies more equitable and inclusive.
In Chicago, where I live, there is a fact that I cannot shake. I can’t get it out of my head that a baby born in the predominantly Black neighborhood of Englewood is expected to live 30 years less than a baby born on the same day in the predominantly white, and more wealthy, neighborhood of Streeterville downtown. That is a difference of six miles—and 30 years.
The promise of abolition, a healed and equal society, has not yet been realized. And we can only get there by working together with friends, community, and in solidarity.
This disparity of life expectancy is a combination of a multitude of factors of which racial identity is one, but it boils down to this: a Black baby born in one part of our nation’s third largest city is less likely to enjoy as long and healthy a life as a white baby born a few miles away. There is no way to imagine that this marks an equal society. Health disparities such as this one affect Native American communities and Latin communities across America, too.
Alongside health, consider gaps in education, earnings, and wealth between racial groups in the United States, in state after state. These, in the words of Douglass, remain among our “national inconsistencies.” Black Americans consistently enjoy fewer of the fruits of the republic than those of other racial and ethnic groups. To achieve true racial healing in America, to get the venom truly out of our system, requires us to keep at the work of racial equity.
The promise of abolition, a healed and equal society, has not yet been realized. And we can only get there by working together with friends, community, and in solidarity. At the MacArthur Foundation, we put this approach into practice each day as we collectively strive to lead with a commitment to justice. The progress we have made in the past, and any progress in the future, requires collaboration between people from all kinds of backgrounds.
Juneteenth is a call to do better as a nation, to create an America in which every child born today—no matter their race, their ethnicity, their gender, their neighborhood—has an equal chance to thrive. We remain a long way from that reality. No matter our race, we should do our part on the unfinished work of creating a free and equal society.
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'Every DA... Should Follow Suit': Prosecutor Seeks to Commute County Death Sentences
District Attorney Jeff Rosen "is taking an important step to confront racism in the criminal legal system," said Smart Justice California.
Apr 04, 2024
In a potential model for other U.S. officials, Santa Clara County District Attorney Jeff Rosen, "once a prosecutor who believed in capital punishment and one who rejects association with the progressive prosecutor movement, has been quietly preparing to ask courts to change the penalties of 14 men from his county who are waiting for that ultimate sentence to be carried out."
That's according toLos Angeles Times columnist Anita Chabria, who exclusively reported on the California prosecutor's efforts, inspired by learning about how the death penalty connects to the country's long history of killing and oppressing people of color.
As Chabria wrote:
In most cases, he wants the court to re-sentence these men (Santa Clara has no women on death row) to serve life without parole. But in a few separate cases, already completed last year, he has requested that they be given the chance of freedom.
Why? An inherent racism in our justice system handed down from slavery to mass incarceration and capital punishment, he cites as a main reason.
"[W]e are not confident that these sentences were attained without racial bias," his office wrote in a motion to courts expected to be filed in coming days in multiple cases. "We cannot defend these sentences, and we believe that implicit bias and structural racism played some role in the death sentence."
"Rosen's unprecedented move (he is the only prosecutor in California to have made such a blanket request, and the only one I could find nationwide) has gone largely unnoticed. But it represents a new battleground in the fight over the death penalty," she asserted. "While many prosecutors around the state and the nation have stopped the use of the death penalty moving forward, Rosen is the first to look back and answer the question—with collective action—If it isn’t fair now, how could it have been fair then? "
The Santa Clara County district attorney previously pursued capital punishment in four cases—including one in which the jury ultimately found the man innocent in June 2020. A month later, Rosen announced he would no longer seek death sentences.
In a 2021 piece for The Appealarguing that Rosen should not be California's next attorney general, retired deputy public defender Michael Ogul wrote that "as someone who witnessed Rosen's attempt to execute an innocent man firsthand, his policy change is nothing more than a brazen attempt to selfishly further his political ambitions."
Rosen has said he changed his position on capital punishment after trips to the
Legacy Sites, a museum, memorial, and sculpture park in Alabama that "invite visitors to reckon with our history of racial injustice in places where that history was lived." They were created by the Equal Justice Initiative, a legal group that represents clients sentenced to death and condemned to die in prison.
"We cannot ignore that the death penalty's roots stretch back to slavery and the lynchings that continued long after the Emancipation Proclamation," Equal Justice USA CEO Jamila Hodge said in a statement Thursday, welcoming Rosen's new resentencing effort. "As lynchings diminished, executions surged. Every time we end the death penalty or stop executions, we chip away at centuries of racial injustice."
The Ella Baker Center also celebrated the development, saying: "The death penalty is rooted in a legacy of racism—from the execution of enslaved people, to the terror and lynching of Black people, to the criminal legal system of executions we have today. We must end it."
Elisabeth Semel, director of the Death Penalty Clinic at the University of California, Berkeley, told the Times columnist that Rosen's "highly significant" move could push other prosecutors to reconsider capital punishment, rather than just reviewing specific cases.
"There is nothing, nothing that these cases have more in common than racial discrimination, whether we are talking about privileging white victims, meaning seeking the death penalty in white crime, or disadvantaging Black clients," Semel said.
In California, over a third of death row inmates are Black and a quarter are Latinx. None of them face imminent executions, thanks to a statewide moratorium imposed in 2019 by Gov. Gavin Newsom, a Democrat reelected in 2022 after a failed recall attempt.
Rosen's initiative notably comes while "California is sliding back toward a tough-on-crime attitude, driven largely by an increase in organized retail [theft] and the fentanyl crisis," as Chabria pointed out Thursday in a separate Times piece about Newsom.
The governor—who "dismantled the death chamber and promised to do away with death row as a segregated (and expensive) cellblock," as Chabria detailed—is barred from running for a third term and considered a potential 2028 presidential candidate.
Democratic President Joe Biden, who is seeking reelection in November, campaigned on ending the death penalty at the federal level, but that lacks the support it would need to pass the divided Congress. He endured intense criticism in January over the U.S. Department of Justice pursuing the death penalty for a mass shooter serving life in prison without the possibility of parole.
The presumptive Republican nominee is former President Donald Trump, whose first term featured a "killing spree" in which the federal government executed 13 death row inmates. During a Tuesday campaign rally, Trump said that if elected, "I will ask Congress to send a bill to my desk ensuring that anyone who murders a police officer will receive immediately the death penalty."
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