As we celebrate Juneteenth for the second year as a national federal holiday — now on Sunday AND Monday—amidst the block parties, barbecues, festivals, concerts, and civic events, I continue to ponder the meaning and implications of this day. My ambivalence about commemorating the occasion of the constitutional right to freedom for African-Americans being reluctantly accepted by the last holdouts is balanced by what I imagine were the jubilant hopes and dreams embodied by those first celebrations, as our people claimed their birthright as free human beings at long last.

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