Juneteenth

Jan. 1, 2008 marked the bicentennial of the end to the transatlantic slave trade in the United States. In a country that touts liberty, freedom and democracy, there was no pause to observe or to acknowledge this part of history in our country where the U.S. Capitol and White House were built with slave labor.

The 1808 law did not end the domestic slave trade, which remained legal until the Emancipation Proclamation as a forerunner to the 13th Amendment. Since 1989, the U.S. Congress has not been able to pass legislation (Commission to Study Reparations Proposals for African-American Act) introduced annually by Congressman John Conyers, D-Michigan, to research the impact of slavery on the social, political and economic life of our nation.

Our nation refused to pass anti-lynching laws even though 3,400 black people were mutilated, beaten, burned and hung from trees and bridges.

July 4, 1776 is celebrated as Independence Day when black people were still in bondage not recognized and respected as full human beings. For the first 20 years after the founding of the United States, the slave trade was protected by the U.S. Constitution.

When Union Major General Gordon Granger and 2,000 federal troops officially notified 250,000 slaves in Galveston, Texas on June 19, 1865 that slavery was abolished, it was two and a half years after President Abraham Lincoln issued the Emancipation Proclamation.

"great emancipator," black people themselves have historically resisted the Maafa (African Holocaust) through rebellion, escaping to Canada and Mexico, protest, demonstrations, boycott, literature, film, championing our civil, constitution and human rights and establishing institutions and organizations to articulate our own vision of freedom and equality.

The legacy of indifference to black disadvantage that emanates from capitalist accumulation and institutional racism continues in the absence of atonement, reconciliation and restitution for the nation's past and residual wrongs against black people.

In the spirit of truth and contrition, Juneteenth should be declared a national holiday to honor the tremendous sacrifice and protracted resolve of a people who continue to struggle for justice, equality and human dignity.