emancipation

Texas Politicians Want to Erase What Happened Between Juneteenth and Jim Crow

by Jeffrey L. Littlejohn and Zachary Montz

Joshua Houston, long enslaved by Sam Houston, recognized that the collective work of securing freedom only began with the announcement of emancipation, and that teaching the state's history honestly was part of the struggle for an egalitarian society against people determined to stand against it. 

Teaching Hard Histories Through Juneteenth

A celebration of freedom should put the work of the people who fought and struggled to achieve it at the center; thinking of freedom as something achieved instead of something granted. 

Gullah Geechee of Sea Islands Fight for their Post-Slavery Legacy

by DeNeen L Brown

The Gullah Geechee people were chosen for enslavement in the Sea Islands because of their experience cultivating rice in Africa, and maintained a distinctive culture with strong African elements through slavery and emancipation. Development and gentrification threaten that legacy today. 

Teach the History Behind "Emancipation" with the Primary Sources

by Alan J. Singer

Antoine Fuqua and Will Smith's "Emancipation" has rediscovered the life of an enslaved man variously called Peter or Gordon, who had been made famous through an 1863 photograph. Here's how history teachers can use the primary records of his life to accompany the film. 

Was Emancipation Intended to Perpetuate Slavery by Other Means?

by Sean Wilentz

Protests movements have latched on to a misguided interpretation of the Thirteenth Amendment that argues it allowed and even encouraged the system of mass incarceration as an extension of slavery. A new global history extends that critique to the age of emancipation in general.

The Freedman's Bank Forum Obscures the Institution's Real History

by Justene Hill Edwards

Vice President Kamala Harris's recent remarks at the forum enlisted the Freedman's Bank to celebrate public-private partnerships between banks and minority communities. The real history of the Freedman's Bank shows why public-private partnerships and moral uplift are inadequate to promote financial equity. 

Revisiting Saidiya Hartman on the Meaning of Freedom

by Keeanga-Yamahtta Taylor

A quarter century after publication, "Scenes of Subjection" still shows how Americans have embraced emancipation as a national expurgation of the sin of slavery, without stopping to consider the substantive meaning of freedom. 

Thulani Davis Reconsiders the Geography of Freedom During Reconstruction

Emancipation wasn't just an idea, it was a literal place, described in a new book as the route around the periphery of the South traced by Black Americans in pursuit of work, business, and family reunification. 

Can Law be an Instrument of Black Liberation?

by Paul Gowder

As activists debate whether the law and courts are a dead end for the pursuit of justice, it's useful to recall Frederick Douglass's conception of the law as a basis for collective demands. 

"Oh, We Knowed What Was Goin’ On": The Myths (and Lies) of Juneteenth

by Clyde W. Ford

After the myths of Juneteenth are stripped away, the day symbolizes the incompleteness of the promise of emancipation. 

A Century After its Dedication, the Lincoln Memorial's Meaning is Still Contested

by Patrick Malone

From its dedication to the present, the meaning and legacy of Lincoln and his memorial have been the focus of struggle between those who see Lincoln as the savior of the Union and those who claim him as the great emancipator.

Painful, Cutting, and Brilliant: The Meaning of Freedom in Letters to Former Enslavers

by Gillian Brockell

Wages and economic security, citizenship rights and family unification were core concerns addressed in letters from free Black people to their former enslavers. 

Are We Witnessing a General Strike Today?

by Nelson Lichtenstein

DuBois's insight that enslaved people abandoning plantations during the Civil War was a form of general strike helps us understand the seemingly unorganized trend of workers quitting their jobs today as a meaningful labor action that points in the direction of economic freedom.

Look to Lincoln's Interactions with Black Americans to Understand His Racial Attitudes

by Michael Burlingame

As Lincoln's personal racial views have come under scrutiny, a biographer says that the prominent and ordinary Black Americans the 16th president dealt with didn't have the doubts today's activists do about where Lincoln stood. 

Overturning Five Myths of the Haitian Revolution

by Julia Gaffield

Many understandings of the Haitian Revolution, from its intellectual and political roots, to its military progress, to its political consequences, are at best half-truths. And it did not entail "white genocide." 

August 1 Was Emancipation Day in Britain, but Abolition Didn't Create Freedom

by Padraic X. Scanlon

Emancipation in the British West Indies was accompanied by policies that maintained the racial hierarchy necessary for profit through labor exploitation. 

What The Haitian Revolution Tells Us About The U.S. Movement For Racial Equality

Historian Marlene Daut on the significance of the Haitian Revolution for America's unfinished struggle for racial equality. 

The Emancipation Proclamation did not End Slavery. Here’s what Did

by Clarence Lusane

Chattel slavery was ended by the enactment of the 13th Amendment. Whatever the merits of recognizing the Juneteenth holiday, it commemorates the specific emancipation of enslaved Texans, and not national abolition. 

The Truth About Black Freedom

by Daina Ramey Berry

Observing Juneteenth shouldn't be limited to commemorating a grant of freedom by the government; the deeper history of emancipation is of Black Americans demanding and pursuing freedom for themselves. 

Biographies of Women and Emancipation in the Americas

by Vanessa M. Holden

Historian Vanessa Holden reviews a new book edited by Erica L. Ball, Tatiana Seijas and Terri L. Snyder which draws on the stories of women of African descent in the Americas to argue that such women helped bring freedom into being and defined what freedom in the world actually means.