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Juneteenth became a federal and Maine state holiday in 2021. But it has been celebrated, especially by Black Americans, for much longer than that. Our collective grasp of history, too often watered down and whitewashed, must continue to catch up with difficult truths of the past.
Widespread celebration of Juneteenth is part of that improved understanding, and Monday’s holiday must be more than a day of rest and relaxation — it must be a day of awareness and action, particularly from those of us with more to learn.
We will admit to not knowing much about Juneteenth until more attention was brought to the holiday in recent years. We’re thankful for that, and for the recognition that there are always ways to deepen our understanding of history and the world as it is today.
Long celebrated in Texas, Junteenth draws its name from June 19, 1865. This was the day the Union army arrived in Galveston, Texas, to announce that all African-American slaves in the state were free in accordance with President Abraham Lincoln’s Emancipation Proclamation. The proclamation had been issued nearly three years earlier, and Texas was the last state in the Confederacy to receive word that the Civil War was over and that slavery had been abolished.
Maine House Speaker Rachel Talbot Ross, the first Black woman to hold that office, sponsored the 2021 legislation that made Juneteenth an official state holiday. She discussed its significance in committee testimony at the time.
“The Juneteenth holiday does not celebrate one day in just one place, but instead it recognizes the harsh experiences of all those who were enslaved. The mothers, fathers, children and siblings who toiled in Maine’s soil and built Maine’s economy without enjoying their own freedom,” Talbot Ross said, having highlighted Maine’s often overlooked but nevertheless real historic role in slavery. “These experiences are documented in our church records, in court cases and in the records of our own Maine State Archives. This is a part of history for all our communities and it is time that we recognize it completely.”
Recently, we’ve seen across the country how this type of recognition and reconciliation with difficult historical truths is often met with defensiveness and even open hostility. Attempts to provide full and accurate accounts of past events have been cast as indoctrination. Inclusion and understanding have been met with derision. Compassion and context have been mislabeled as “woke.”
Defensiveness and deference to incomplete historical perspectives might be more comfortable for some, but it is not how we move forward together as a state or as a country. Failure to acknowledge past mistakes only compounds them moving forward.
Impact matters, regardless of intent. We have some experience here. For years, we had published the same shortened version of Martin Luther King’s “I have a dream” speech. It was not our intention, but many people explained earlier this year how our failed attempt to honor King actually whitewashed his message and ignored the essence of his speech. Ultimately, the damaging impact this had on Black Mainers (and people elsewhere) mattered much more than our intent to honor King.
We don’t move forward together as Mainers or as Americans by sanitizing history, pretending that mistakes haven’t been made or that inequalities don’t persist to this day. We move forward with awareness, and a commitment to doing better. Juneteenth provides another opportunity to build on this vital work.
Many different Juneteenth events are happening in Maine on Monday. Scheduled in places such as Portland, Lewiston and Ellsworth, we encourage people to attend one (or multiple) of these events if they can, in order to hear about the meaning of Juneteenth from people who are far more experienced and eloquent than we are. And we encourage Mainers to engage with different people and different ideas, and to challenge themselves and what they think they know about history — and about how its unequal impacts continue to ripple through society today.
