Editorial: Juneteenth and the growing awareness of an important date

We would venture to guess that as recently as two years ago, perhaps even more recently than that, few people outside the African American community could have answered a civics question on the origin, importance or even the definition of Juneteenth.

Today, it seems likely that in the future nearly all Americans, from elementary schoolchildren to adults, will understand what happened on June 19, 1865, and why it matters.

On Wednesday, Illinois Gov. J.B. Pritzker signed into law a measure declaring Juneteenth an official state holiday. A day before, the U.S. Senate unanimously approved a proposal to declare the date as the federal holiday "Juneteenth National Independence Day." The House quickly followed with at a 415-14 vote on Wednesday and President Joe Biden signed it into law Thursday.

Juneteenth, which has also been known as Emancipation Day, recognizes the day when Union soldiers arrived in Galveston, Texas, to tell enslaved Black Texans that the Civil War was over and they were legally free - and had been since President Abraham Lincoln's Emancipation Proclamation took effect a year and a half earlier.

For more than a century, the date commanded little attention in the broad historical knowledge of most Americans, but continued to be commemorated by many African Americans. In 1980, Texas became the first state to recognize the date as a holiday, and since then, all but a few have followed suit or otherwise given it special status. But the renounced injustices associated with June 19 really became fixed in the national consciousness as protests and conversations about racial inequities erupted in the aftermath of the deaths of George Floyd, Breonna Taylor and other Black Americans.

Those conversations clearly need to continue, and the establishment of a state and federal holiday helps ensure they will.

This is not a holiday of celebration but one of remembrance of the horrible injustice of slavery.

In our ongoing efforts to build a more just and harmonious country we all must recognize the depth of the wrong that slavery was if we are to overcome its legacy. This is a holiday for all Americans, not just the children of slavery.

There are some complications to the observance. Racial inequities, unfortunately, have not historically been exclusive to Black Americans and have been experienced by numerous ethic groups over the decades. Yet, the particular circumstances of June 19, 1865 - not just slavery itself, but the added injustice of keeping an entire population unaware that its condition had changed - also offers unique opportunities to reflect on America's racial past and the depth of injustices that have had to be overcome - some, indeed, which remain to be stamped out - in the unending struggle to perfect our freedom-loving republic.

This is not to suggest that Juneteenth should be watered into some generic, broad repudiation of societal inequalities. Yes, the remembrance is such a condemnation, to a degree, but it also comes to that point by highlighting the particular suffering of a particular people. That fact must not be ignored or overlooked, for, in a very real sense, it humanizes and intensifies our awareness of the injustices we abhor and the nature of true racial and ethnic equality.

So, it is humbling and gratifying to consider that, finally, after 156 years, that awareness won't be limited primarily to the group whose American experience traces most closely to June 19, 1865, but will be studied, debated and appreciated by all who cherish the promises of our Constitution and our way of life.