13 hours ago
- Politics
- Indianapolis Star
Juneteenth is this week. What to know about the federal holiday. What does the flag mean?
Juneteenth, the federal holiday commemorating the end of slavery in the U.S., is this annually on June 19, expect celebrations, festivals and closed Indiana state and federal government buildings.
Juneteenth – also called Emancipation Day, Freedom Day or Jubilee Day – commemorates the day in 1865 when enslaved African Americans in Galveston, Texas, received news that they were free, two years after Abraham Lincoln's Emancipation Proclamation.
Texas became the first U.S. state to recognize Juneteenth as a holiday in 1980. After more than a million signatures were collected to make it a federally-recognized holiday; President Joe Biden declared it so in 2021.
In a 2020 interview with The Wall Street Journal, Trump took credit for popularizing Juneteenth after his plans to hold a campaign rally in Tulsa, Oklahoma, on the holiday were met with backlash. Tulsa was the site of the Greenwood race massacre, when a violent white mob attacked a prosperous Black community, killing hundreds of its residents and burning more than 1,250 homes.
The uproar prompted him to move the rally, and said news coverage of the rally brought attention the holiday.
'I did something good: I made Juneteenth very famous,' he said.
'It's actually an important event, an important time,' Trump said in the 2020 interview. 'But nobody had ever heard of it.'
The White House has released statements attributed to Trump in 2017, 2018 and 2019 commemorating Juneteenth.
Opal Lee: The 'Grandmother of Juneteenth' has questions about Indiana ties
'Juneteenth reminds us of both the unimaginable injustice of slavery and the incomparable joy that must have attended emancipation,' he said in a June 19, 2020 message. 'It is both a remembrance of a blight on our history and a celebration of our Nation's unsurpassed ability to triumph over darkness.'
First created in 1997 by National Juneteenth Celebration Foundation founder Ben Haith, the banner is in red, white and blue of the U.S. flag to convey that all enslaved people and their descendants are American.
The flag features a five-pointed star representing Texas, the Lone Star State, outlined with a burst at the center. An arc runs through the center to symbolize a new horizon of opportunity for Black people.
Artist Lisa Jeanne GrafIn revised the flag in 2000, and in 2007 "June 19, 1865" was added to represent the date the legal decree was issued to enforce the Emancipation Proclamation, the Jan. 1, 1863, executive order declaring all enslaved people in the U.S. were free.
It was first displayed in Boston.
Find more information at the National Museum of African History's website.
The pan-African flag
Year created: 1920
Designed by: Jamaican activist Marcus Garvey, who called for a Black liberation flag representing all of the African diaspora.
Design: Three horizontal stripes of red, black, and green. Red represents the blood uniting all people of Black African ancestry and shed for liberation; black represents Black people; and green represents the abundant natural wealth of Africa.
The Black American Heritage flag
Year created: 1967
Designed by: Melvin Charles and Gleason Jackson, to convey and represent pride in the history of Black Americans.
