06/20/2026
Juneteenth — June 19th, also known as Emancipation Day, commemorates people seizing their freedom. This beautiful tradition of Black freedom should be taught in school.
Yet, if this administration has its way, it will be illegal to teach students about Juneteenth. Most states have passed or proposed legislation to prohibit teaching about structural racism, and books are being banned and removed from school libraries in record numbers. The goal is to outlaw teaching about the founding of this country on slavery and genocide, as well as about the long Black freedom struggle, including how systems like policing, redlining, and voter suppression laws continue to shape our communities today.
But educators continue to teach truthfully. They are doubling down on their commitment to teach young people about institutionalized racism and how to organize for justice. This year, Juneteenth falls just before the 250th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence — and left out of the official America250 commemorations is the fact that, after independence, the United States took deliberate steps to protect, expand, and enforce slavery, woven into the economic foundations of the new nation, both North and South.
Juneteenth reminds us that emancipation didn't arrive because the founders carved an ever-widening path toward freedom. It came because enslaved people resisted, abolitionists organized, and mass struggle forced a break from the slaveholding status quo.
