WISCONSIN
Juneteenth celebrations across the US commemorate the end of slavery
PORTSMOUTH, N.H. (AP) — Juneteenth celebrations unfolded across the U.S. on Thursday to mark the day in 1865 when Union soldiers brought the news of freedom to enslaved Black people in Texas. The events include one in Galveston — the holiday’s birthplace — where former President Joe Biden was expected.
Juneteenth has been celebrated by Black Americans for generations, but became more widely observed after Biden designated it a federal holiday in 2021. It is recognized at least as an observance in every state, and nearly 30 states and Washington, D.C., have designated it as a permanent paid or legal holiday through legislation or executive action.
On the East Coast, the Black Heritage Trail of New Hampshire orchestrated a weekslong celebration that will culminate with a community dance and rededication of the African Burying Ground Memorial Park in Portsmouth. In Virginia, a ceremonial groundbreaking was held for rebuilding the First Baptist Church of Williamsburg, one of the nation’s oldest Black churches,
The holiday to mark the end of slavery in the U.S. goes back to an order issued on June 19, 1865 as Union troops arrived in Galveston at the end of the Civil War. General Order No. 3 declared that all enslaved people in the state were free and had “absolute equality.”
Those who planned the history tours, community discussions and other events in New Hampshire said they wanted to highlight contradictions in the familiar narratives about the nation’s founding fathers ahead of next year’s 250th anniversary of the signing of the Declaration of Independence.
“Although they are historically courageous, smart men, they were also human. They held people in bondage. They had children with their enslaved,” said JerriAnne Boggis, the Heritage Trail’s executive director. “What would the story look like if the story of America was told from these Black descendants?”
The celebrations come as President Donald Trump’s administration has worked to ban diversity, equity and inclusion initiatives, or DEI, in the federal government and remove content about Black American history from federal websites. Trump’s travel ban on visitors from select countries has also led to bitter national debate.
During his first administration, Trump issued statements each June 19, including one that ended with “On Juneteenth 2017, we honor the countless contributions made by African Americans to our Nation and pledge to support America’s promise as the land of the free.”
New Hampshire, one of the nation’s whitest states, is not among those with a permanent, paid or legal Juneteenth holiday, and Boggis said her hope that lawmakers would take action making it one is waning.
“I am not so sure anymore given the political environment we’re in,” she said. “I think we’ve taken a whole bunch of steps backwards in understanding our history, civil rights and inclusion.”
Still, she hopes New Hampshire’s events and those elsewhere will make a difference.
“It’s not a divisive tool to know the truth. Knowing the truth helps us understand some of the current issues that we’re going through,” she said.
And if spreading that truth comes with a bit of fun, all the better, she said.
“When we come together, when we break bread together, we enjoy music together, we learn together, we dance together, we’re creating these bonds of community,” she said. “As much was we educate, we also want to celebrate together.”
Libertarian Guy
June 19, 2025 at 5:40 pm
On June 19, 1865, Union troops arrived in Galveston, Texas, and issued an order that should never have needed to be spoken: “All slaves are free.” It came two and a half years after the Emancipation Proclamation. Two and a half years of delayed justice. Two and a half years of stolen breath. Two and a half years of liberty denied by those who still clung to the belief that one man could own another. Juneteenth is a red letter day in the American liberty movement. A reminder that tyranny doesn’t always fall when it’s declared dead. It lingers in the soil, in the courts, in the systems and incentives of power. Freedom, once delayed, must be fought for again and again. And yet, it is also something greater. It is proof that truth eventually breaks chains. The Libertarian spirit was alive in the abolitionist movement long before our party was formally born. It lived in the pen of Lysander Spooner, who rejected slavery not only as immoral but as incompatible with the very text of American law. As he wrote in The Unconstitutionality of Slavery:
“A man’s natural rights are his own, against the whole world; and any infringement of them is equally a crime, whether committed by one man, calling himself a robber, or by millions, calling themselves a government.”
That spirit lived in the defiance of Frederick Douglass, who carried the scars of bondage and the flame of individual dignity. It lived in the underground railways, in pulpits that defied popular opinion, and in every outstretched hand that guided another toward freedom. In Europe, that same current ran through the classically liberal revolutions that rejected divine right and demanded the sovereignty of the individual. From the British Parliament where William Wilberforce refused to rest until the slave trade was abolished, to the Haitian Revolution where enslaved men proclaimed liberty not as a request, but as a reality worth fighting for. It was not political convenience that shattered slavery. It was moral clarity and righteous will—the knowledge that no human being is born to serve another.
That principle remains the heart of the Libertarian ethos. We reject any claim of ownership over the individual, by king, by Congress, or by consensus. We do not ask to be ruled more gently. We demand to be left free. Liberty is not merely the absence of chains, it is the presence of fierce conviction, the kind that moved men and women to defy empires, shelter the hunted, and walk headlong into danger for the promise of dignity. Emancipation was not granted, it was taken. It was earned in blood and fire and vision. That struggle, while transformed, is not finished. Because slavery was outlawed, but the machinery of coercion adapted. It still lives in no-knock raids, in asset forfeiture, in conscription, and in taxation, in the bureaucratic cages built for nonviolent men and women, in systems that presume guilt and strip the powerless of voice, property, and rights. Juneteenth is not only a day to remember what was overcome, but to recommit to what must still be dismantled. A truly free society does not merely promise equality under the law, it delivers it. It does not demand obedience to rulers, it respects the sovereignty of the individual. It does not trade liberty for comfort, or justice for order. There is only one political party in America today founded entirely on these truths. One movement that does not seek power for itself, but seeks to end the unnatural power one group of people holds over another. The Libertarian Party. If you feel the weight of history today, let it steel your resolve, not into guilt or grievance, but into purpose. There is still a fight worth waging. And we are waging it.
reprinted with permission