Isabel Wilkerson Instagram – 246 years. Nearly two and a half centuries. That is how long slavery lasted in what is now the United States of America. Today, we commemorate Juneteenth, the day in June 1865 — two years after the Emancipation Proclamation and two months after the Civil War ended — that the last enslaved African-Americans were finally free.
This is a day of celebration, of memory and of sober reflection. A time to remember that slavery was not merely a sad, dark chapter in our country’s history, but the foundation of the country’s social, political and economic order, and that it lasted for nearly a quarter of a millennium.
Here, survivors of slavery steadfastly observe Juneteenth in their hats, canes and bonnets in Austin, TX, 1900. In the early years, the newly freed people and their descendants took pains to dress up for Juneteenth, as laws had forbidden slaves from dressing “above their station,” above their caste.
In honor of the last of African-Americans to finally be set free from chattel slavery….
#juneteenth #freedomday | Posted on 20/Jun/2023 02:29:13
