On Thursday, the nation celebrated the Juneteenth holiday, which commemorates the end of slavery in the United States. The youngest national holiday was signed into law by then-President Joe Biden on June 17, 2021. Annually, communities gather on June 19 to share meals music, dance, and participate in freedom walks. And since it’s passing into law, the Biden White House held a concert on the South Lawn to commemorate and remember this momentous day.
Even this year, the ex-president attended a Juneteenth celebration at Reedy Chapel African Methodist Episcopal Church in Galveston. In his remarks at the church, Mr. Biden said, “Black history is American history.” The Trump White House, however, barely mentioned the holiday, except in the context of a remark where he complained that there are too many national holidays.
Why is Juneteenth?
Juneteenth is celebrated and remembered as the day U.S. General Gordon Granger stood in Galveston, TX, on June 19, 1865, and read General Orders No. 3: “The people of Texas are informed that, in accordance with a proclamation from the Executive of the United States, all slaves are free.”
This day occurred two and a half years after the signing of the Emancipation Proclamation. President Lincoln’s Emancipation Proclamation of 1963 declared that all enslaved people in Confederate states in rebellion against the Union “shall be then, thenceforward, and forever free.”
However, the proclamation only applied to places under Confederate control and not slave-holding border states or rebel areas already under Union control. That December, slavery in America was officially abolished with the passage of the 13th Amendment. Celebrations have occurred in African American communities in the U.S. ever since. Still, there was a decline in Juneteenth celebrations due to Jim Crow laws that were enacted in some states, which limited the freedoms and rights of Black Americans.
Trump’s Response to Juneteenth
This year, Trump virtually ignored any mention of Juneteenth except for in this post on social media, which read. “Soon we’ll end up having a holiday for every once working day of the year. It must change if we are going to, MAKE AMERICA GREAT AGAIN!” The president did not mention Juneteenth nor acknowledge that Thursday was a national holiday.
Karoline Leavitt, the White House press secretary, indicated earlier in the day that she was not aware of any plans by Mr. Trump to sign a holiday proclamation. This is interesting because, over the past week alone, he issued proclamations commemorating Father’s Day, Flag Day, National Flag Week, and the 250th anniversary of the Battle of Bunker Hill. None of which are one of the 11 annual federal holidays.
And in response to a reporter’s question about Juneteenth, Ms. Leavitt admitted that Thursday was “a federal holiday,” but incomplete avoidance of acknowledging the holiday noted that White House staff were working that day and then turned to a discussion of whether Mr. Trump would order strikes on Iran.
Inconsistent Response to Holiday
But Mr. Trump has not always been so diffident toward the Juneteenth anniversary. In 2017, he remarked. “Melania and I send our warmest greetings to all those celebrating Juneteenth, a historic day recognizing the end of slavery.” Or in 2018, he praised “the courage and sacrifice of the nearly 200,000 former enslaved and free African Americans who fought for liberty. And in 2019, he said.
“Across our country, the contributions of African Americans continue to enrich every facet of American life.” In 2020: “June reminds us of both the unimaginable injustice of slavery and the incomparable joy that must have attended emancipation. It is both a remembrance of a blight on our history and a celebration of our Nation’s unsurpassed ability to triumph over darkness.”
In Conclusion
But none of this should come as a shock given the president’s actions during his current term to eviscerate funding for diversity, equity, and inclusion programs, ban books about Black history, his attacks on the 14th Amendment (that granted citizenship and equal civil and legal rights to African Americans and slaves who had been emancipated after the American Civil War), and his overall attempt to bury Black history.
