How Can We Celebrate Juneteenth When We Still Aren't Free?

Today is Juneteenth, and today’s article is written by bestselling author and historian Jemar Tisby.

We’re now in year three of Juneteenth as a national holiday, so you’re likely familiar with the general story. 

On June 19, 1865, Major-General Gordon Granger read General Order No. 3 to enslaved people in Galveston, TX declaring their freedom. Every year since then, African American communities have marked Juneteenth—a mashup of the words “June” and “nineteenth”—as the oldest celebration of emancipation from slavery. 

And yet despite liberation from physical chains, Black people in the United States continue to struggle against racism and inequality. 

The Juneteenth holiday challenges us to ask the question—How can we celebrate freedom when we’re still not free? 

Freedom is always a work in progress, and we must simultaneously understand the limits of freedom while also honoring each step toward liberation.

Studying history shows us how to do that. 

The Words of General Order No. 3 

Even if you know about the announcement that day in 1865, few people have actually read the entire statement. Studying the actual words of General Order No. 3 reveals that concepts of unfreedom mingled with the words of liberation. 

The people of Texas are informed that, in accordance with a proclamation from the Executive of the United States, all slaves are free. This involves an absolute equality of personal rights and rights of property between former masters and slaves, and the connection heretofore existing between them becomes that between employer and hired labor. The freedmen are advised to remain quietly at their present homes and work for wages. They are informed that they will not be allowed to collect at military posts and that they will not be supported in idleness either there or elsewhere. By order of Major General Granger - June 19, 1865 

The proclamation declared “all slaves are free.” 

Just pause for a moment and try to appreciate how these words must have felt to the enslaved people who heard it. 

Imagine the joy. 

A people born into slavery along with their parents and their ancestors before them—all they knew was bondage. They worked from “can’t to can’t”— from when you can’t see in the morning until you can’t see at night. 

And what did they earn for all that hard work? Not a paycheck. Not dignity. Merely the opportunity to do it all again the next day. 

And now…freedom! Jubilee! 

Except, not quite. 

The “all slaves are free” line was not fully realized. Legal emancipation only came when Congress ratified the 13^th Amendment abolishing slavery in the U.S. on December 6, 1865. 

And the freedom announced on Juneteenth had strings attached—the strings of racism, white supremacy, and fear. 

The new relationship of Black and white people changed from “masters and slaves” to “employer and hired labor.” 

The assumption then became that the former enslavers would now take the role of employer. Formerly enslaved people would take the role of employee. Notice what was not assumed: that Black people will own businesses or that white people will work for Black people.. The essential power dynamic and social structure remained unchanged. 

The statement went on to say, “freedmen are advised to remain quietly at their present homes and work for wages.” 

The former enslavers still needed labor, but they were certainly not interested in paying fair market value for hired employees. So they devised new systems of labor exploitation:  sharecropping—or debt peonage—and convict leasing.

And why did the General Order use the word “quietly”? 

White fears of Black rebellion.

Many white people expected Black people to take up arms against their former oppressors or to become completely unruly if they did not have enslavement to restrain them. 

The order stated that Black people were not allowed to gather at military posts. In other words, “Black people, don’t expect the federal government to look out for you or think that you’ll escape your former plantation life by hanging out at Union bases.”

Most confounding, the statement read that Black people would not be “supported in idleness either here or elsewhere.” 

Ponder the preposterousness of that statement. 

For centuries Black labor had literally built the wealth of the nation. They drained swamps, cleared trees, washed clothes, sowed, seeded, harvested fields, and much, much more. 

Black people worked harder than anyone else in a plantation economy. Now white people feared they would be lazy? 

Quite the opposite. In 1865, Black people looked forward to working harder than ever before because they were finally working for themselves, and they had the chance to receive some form of compensation. 

But even the announcement of freedom came with stereotypes about a lack of work ethic among Black people. 

The imperfect General Order No. 3 demonstrates freedom, but it’s not complete. It’s not full. It is a halting step toward liberty that was still weighed down by concepts of anti-blackness and white supremacy.

The Bondage that Came After “Freedom” 

Bondage did not end with the 13^th Amendment, a policy which itself included the infamous “exception clause” allowing for unfree labor if someone was convicted of a crime. 

After the Civil War and the short period of Reconstruction, nearly a century of Jim Crow segregation ensued. 

The Ku Klux Klan formed in 1866 to “take back the South” for the white man. The Plessy v. Ferguson Supreme Court decision of 1896 made “separate but equal” the law of the land. White supremacists conducted bloody racial terrorism in the form of lynchings to instill fear in the Black populace.  

Not until the Civil Rights movement of the 1950s and 1960s did these forms of racism begin to crumble. These efforts led to the Brown v. Board decision, the 1964 Civil Rights Act, the 1965 Voting Rights Act, and the 1968 Fair Housing Act—milestones in the struggle for freedom.

Freedom Is a Constant Struggle

We have erred, though. 

As a nation, we have often operated as if what has been gained in terms of freedom and civil rights can never again be lost. But our civil rights are never secure. As Dr. Angela Y. Davis wrote, “Freedom is a constant struggle.” 

Today, Black people and many others are still denied the “unalienable rights” to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. 

The Supreme Court overturned decades of precedent in 2023 when the majority decided that race could not be considered as a factor in college admissions. 

A federal court of appeals  placed an injunction on a venture capital firm’s grant program, the Fearless Fund, which provided financial support and mentoring to businesses owned by Black women..

The lawsuit brought by the last three (only two remain living) witnesses to the infamous Tulsa Race Massacre of 1921 was dismissed by the Oklahoma Supreme Court. 

The right-wing legal group, Judicial Watch, is suing the city of Evanston, IL over a first-of-its-kind municipal reparations effort designed to address historic segregation in its housing. 

These and many other threats to liberty remain. 

How to Celebrate Freedom When We’re Still Not Free

How can we celebrate the freedom that Juneteenth represents when we remain unfree? 

The good news is: We are not powerless. 

First, we can celebrate freedom by funding the people who are dedicated to securing it. 

Black people, in particular, have been fighting for freedom ever since being forcibly brought to this continent centuries ago. 

That tradition continues today, and we can celebrate freedom by offering financial support to individuals and organizations doing the work right now. 

Who are you learning from on social media or elsewhere? Send them a donation via CashApp or Venmo. Buy their books. Purchase their courses. 

Today is a perfect time to set up a recurring donation to an institution you appreciate. And don’t just look at the large organizations, either. Look locally. Find out what organizations in your community are working toward liberation and equality. 

We often think race-based chattel slavery was primarily about white people not liking Black people because of skin color. This was certainly part of the damage of slavery, but its primary function was the acquisition of a cheap labor force. 

The only way to remedy the exploitation of Black labor is by ensuring that Black people today have the resources denied them for generations.

Second, we have to be vigilant about the peaceful transfer of power and the value of the vote. 

Not since the Civil War has democracy itself been so under threat. The attempted insurrection on January 6, 2021 gave us a glimpse of what some in our nation are willing to do in order to capture power. 

As flawed as our democracy is, the alternative—authoritarianism and white Christian nationalism—decimates our chances for constructive change. 

Voting, talking to recalcitrant neighbors and family members, sharing information online about the danger of plans such as Project 2025 are all necessary. Our civic responsibilities to each other and our nation compel us to action. 

Finally, we cannot give up hope. 

Cynicism and despair are luxuries we cannot afford. 

As a historian, I believe we owe it to those who struggled and strived before us to continue their fight. 

Racism, oppression, and exploitation show up in every era of our past. Unfortunately, our inhumanity to other human beings is so common as to be predictable. 

What is truly astounding, however, is that in every age of our history people have risen up to resist injustice. 

In my upcoming book, The Spirit of Justice, I quote Civil Rights veteran and human rights activist Myrlie Evers-Williams who put words to this resilience.

 “But it’s something about the spirit of justice that raises up like a war horse. That horse that stands with its back sunk in and hears that bell—I like to say the ‘bell of freedom.’ And all of a sudden, it becomes straight, and the back becomes stiff. And you become determined all over again.”

As I’ve studied history, I’ve found a pattern of endurance not only in the life of Myrlie Evers-Williams but in the centuries- long struggle for Black freedom. The spirit of justice was at work in Anna Murray Douglass, Harriet Tubman, E.C. Morris, Coretta Scott King, and countless others who pursued Black liberation and justice for all.

However, the work of the spirit of justice is not confined to the past. Nor is it the privilege of a single group or individual. The spirit of justice belongs to all of us.

We can draw strength from the history of the Black freedom struggle to reinvigorate our work for justice today.  

Juneteenth is a celebration of emancipation. It represents a positive development in our nation’s history we should all acknowledge. 

Even though freedom is never finished, Juneteenth is a reminder that we can bend the arc of the moral universe toward justice, and if we hang on, we can bend it just a bit more.  

Jemar Tisby is the New York Times bestselling author of The Color of Compromise and the award-winning How to Fight Racism. He serves as Professor of History at Simmons College of Kentucky, a historically Black college founded in 1879. His writing has been featured in TIME, CNN, The Atlantic, and the Washington Post among others. He has been a co-host of the "Pass the Mic" podcast for more than 10 years, and he speaks nationally at churches, colleges, and conferences. Dr. Tisby earned his PhD in history from the University of Mississippi with a focus on race, religion and social movements in the 20th century. You can pre-order his next book The Spirit of Justice now, and follow his latest work at JemarTisby.Substack.com.