Commemorating Juneteenth

From The New Yorker’s archive: a selection of pieces about racial injustice and the abiding legacy of slavery. View in browser | Update your preferences Commemorating Juneteenth Juneteenth, the commemoration of emancipation, is a moment of reflection for this country. Last year, the Harvard professor and historian Annette Gordon-Reed published a piece in The New Yorker about her childhood in Texas and the meaning of the holiday for her family and community. Juneteenth and the Fourth of July were inextricably linked during those years, she notes, in part because the Declaration of Independence carried a promise yet to be fulfilled for Black Americans. “I also did not know, as a child,” she writes, “how intensely African-Americans had fought to keep alive the memory of Juneteenth—to commemorate our ancestors’ struggles and their hopes, and to link them to our own.” Today, as we prepare to honor the holiday and those sacrifices, on June 19th, we’re bringing you a selection of pieces about racial injustice and the abiding legacy of slavery. In “The Prophecies of George Floyd,” Michael Eric Dyson explores how Floyd’s killing sparked some of the largest protests in American history, and considers the inescapable threat of violence by police officers against Black Americans. In “The Long War Against Slavery,” Casey Cep writes about the protracted struggle of abolitionists and civil-rights activists across the country. In “Black Bodies in Motion and in Pain,” Edwidge Danticat reflects on the massacre at the Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church, in Charleston, and asks whether the nation will ever confront the devastating repercussions of white supremacy. (“Black bodies are increasingly becoming battlefields upon which horrors are routinely executed, each one so close to the last that we barely have the time to fully grieve and mourn.”) Finally, in “The Matter of Black Lives,” from 2016, Jelani Cobb profiles Alicia Garza, a co-founder of Black Lives Matter, and examines the powerful appeal of the movement that is helping to change America. —David Remnick From The New Yorker’s Archive Personal History Growing Up with Juneteenth How a Texan holiday became a national tradition. By Annette Gordon-Reed | June 19, 2020 Cultural Comment The Prophecies of George Floyd The fact that Floyd could tell that his death was coming underscored the inevitability of violence in encounters between police officers and Black suspects. By Michael Eric Dyson | January 17, 2021 Books The Long War Against Slavery A new book argues that many seemingly isolated rebellions are better understood as a single protracted struggle. By Casey Cep | January 27, 2020 Newsletters Sign Up for The New Yorker’s Crossword-Puzzle Newsletter Never miss another New Yorker crossword again. Cultural Comment Black Bodies in Motion and in Pain These days, it seems that black bodies are more threatened than they have ever been so far in this century. By Edwidge Danticat | June 22, 2015 The Political Scene The Matter of Black Lives A new kind of movement found its moment. What will its future be? By Jelani Cobb | March 6, 2016 You’re receiving this e-mail because you signed up for the New Yorker Classics newsletter. Was this e-mail forwarded to you? Sign up. Unsubscribe | Manage your e-mail preferences | Send newsletter feedback | View our Privacy Policy Copyright © Condé Nast 2021. One World Trade Center, New York, NY 10007. All rights reserved.