The holiday is celebrated on June 19th (thus the name, Juneteenth) because, on that date in 1865, Union soldiers announced to enslaved persons in Texas that the US Civil War had ended and that they had been freed from bondage by the Emancipation Proclamation (two years prior in 1863). Freed Black and Afro-Indigenous people from Texas brought the celebration with them when they migrated to nearby places like Louisiana, Arkansas, Oklahoma, and Mexico and—even farther—to California, Oregon, and Washington state.

Juneteenth is a communal celebration, nowadays commemorated with events like block parties, cookouts, parades, and rodeos. In my home state of Oklahoma, I witnessed my aunt organize a two-day block party complete with competitions, games, food, and live performances. Like many memorial occasions in the Black diasporic tradition, Juneteenth is a celebratory one instead of solemn, commemoration. Festivities I witnessed in both Oklahoma City, OK, and Oakland, CA, centered on joyous observation of the long-fought for end of US chattel slavery and the status of Black liberation in this country.

However, the fight for Black liberation was not resolved with the end of slavery and the close of the US Civil War. The US has failed to extend the promise of liberty to all, and while no one is more cognizant of that fact than Black—and Indigenous and Afro-Indigenous—people, high-profile killings of Black people have similarly spurred global enlightenment.