Continuing the Fight for Juneteenth

Thank you to my local paper, the Lexington News-Gazette, for inviting me to write a monthly guest column this summer. My first commentary appeared last Wednesday and focused on Juneteenth. My small town hosted another wonderful celebration on Friday. I can’t wait for next year’s — and what I hope is a massively better political landscape. More on that below: June 19 is Juneteenth National Independence Day, America’s federal holiday commemorating the end of slavery. Though the Emancipation Proclamation declared that end on the first day of 1863, and Civil War combat halted with Lee’s surrender on April 9, 1865, the practice of slavery continued in the furthest corners of the former Confederacy until the Union arrived in Galveston, Texas on June 19, 1865. Major General Gordon Granger, with the assistance of 2,000 soldiers, delivered the belated news: “The people of Texas are informed that, in accordance with a proclamation from the Executive of the United States, all slaves are free.…