Tengrain has a post about Juneteenth, a holiday which celebrates the final liberation, two months after the end of the Civil War, of slaves in Galveston, Texas. A certain jerk in the White House, a house largely built by slave labor, claimed that nobody had heard of Juneteenth before he made it famous. Yeah, nobody had heard of it...
I first learned of Juneteenth back in the 1990s, when it was largely a Texan holiday, one of many regional celebrations, such as the April 16 Emancipation Day of the abolition of slavery. Here in New York State, the prominent African-American holiday is Pinkster, a Spring festival which corresponds to the old Dutch Pentecost celebrations, when slaves were granted a sort of 'carnival' season in which family reunions could take place. I learned about holidays such as Juneteenth and Pinkster because I have African-American friends, and I listened to them, and took them seriously. The existence of Juneteenth was hardly a secret in early 2020.
Poking around the t00bz, I found a wonderful 'Schoolhouse Rock' style cartoon about Juneteenth, featuring The Roots and originally airing on the show Black-ish:
I notice that the video was posted back in 2017... so much for the jerk-in-chief being the guy who put Juneteenth on the calendar.
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