Today we honor Juneteenth — the day in 1865 when enslaved people in Texas finally received word of their freedom, more than two years after the Emancipation Proclamation. It is a day of profound joy, hard-won dignity, and the enduring power of a people who refused to stop believing in their own humanity.
It is also a day to be honest about where we are and what we are tolerating today – public speech and actions that would have been shunned ten years ago.
In recent years, we’ve watched public commitments to equity and justice quietly rolled back. DEI programs dismantled. History classrooms sanitized. The very language of justice — equal opportunity and civil rights — treated in some quarters as something controversial, even dangerous. The progress many sacrificed so much to build is being torn down, often without fanfare and frequently without accountability.
Juneteenth reminds us that justice is possible — but only if people refuse to look away. The emancipators didn’t wait for consensus. The marchers didn’t wait for comfort. They held the line on what they knew to be true: that every person deserves to live in full dignity, free from fear and discrimination and with an equal opportunity to succeed.
So today, we remember, we honor and we recommit — to showing up, to speaking up and to demonstrating the norms of behavior required for a just society clearly. Today is the day that we do our part to ensuring the arc of history keeps bending towards justice and a more perfect union.
