Why Juneteenth matters more than ever

For generations, Black Americans and their allies have called for reparations for one of the greatest crimes in human history. Millions of people bought, sold, brutalized, and forced to labor for the enrichment of others. Families were separated. Lives were stolen. Vast fortunes were built.

On June 19, 1865, Union soldiers arrived in Galveston, Texas, and announced that enslaved people were free.¹

The Emancipation Proclamation had been issued more than two years earlier. The Civil War had effectively ended months before. Yet thousands of enslaved people in Texas remained in bondage because those who profited from their labor had simply chosen not to tell them the truth. 

That is what Juneteenth commemorates: the arrival of the news of freedom. 

The distinction matters because Juneteenth is ultimately a story about power: who controls information, who benefits when the truth is withheld, and what happens when people are denied the knowledge they need to understand their own circumstances. 

Why remembering matters 

No state makes that irony more visible than Texas. It is the birthplace of Juneteenth and was the first state to officially recognize Juneteenth as a holiday.² Yet in 2021, the same year Congress finally made Juneteenth a federal holiday, the Texas Legislature passed House Bill 3979, restricting discussions of race, systemic racism and historical injustice in public schools.³     

These debates are not unique to Texas. Across the country, lawmakers have introduced similar measures. The struggle over historical memory is often framed as a cultural or political disagreement. But beneath the rhetoric lies a simpler reality: history has consequences.  

In 2005, JPMorgan Chase disclosed that two of its predecessor banks in Louisiana had accepted approximately 13,000 enslaved people as collateral for loans and had taken ownership of roughly 1,250 people when borrowers defaulted.⁴ Today, they’re worth over $800 billion. 

New York Life revealed that by 1847, policies covering enslaved people accounted for roughly one-third of its business.⁵ 

In 1838, Georgetown University sold 272 people for today’s equivalent of $3.3 million in order to avoid bankruptcy.⁶ 

The wealth generated by slavery did not disappear when emancipation arrived. It circulated, accumulated, and helped build the financial institutions, infrastructure, and industries that shaped the modern United States.

Economist Thomas Craemer has estimated that the value of uncompensated enslaved labor, when calculated over time with interest, would amount to trillions of dollars today.⁷ While scholars debate the precise figures, the broader point is difficult to dispute: slavery was a system of extraordinary wealth extraction which led to America’s economic development. 

The past in the present 

Nor did the history of slavery end neatly with emancipation. 

The 13th Amendment abolished slavery and involuntary servitude—except as punishment for a crime.⁸ That exception would soon become the foundation for new systems of labor exploitation throughout the South. 

States passed Black Codes that criminalized everyday activities and targeted newly freed Black Americans.⁹ Those convicted were often leased to private companies, where they worked in mines, railroads, farms, and factories under brutal conditions. By the end of the nineteenth century, convict leasing had become a major source of revenue for Southern states.¹⁰

That history continues to echo today. 

A 2024 Associated Press investigation documented how food produced by incarcerated workers enters supply chains that ultimately reach consumers across the country. Meanwhile, a 2022 report from the ACLU found that incarcerated workers across the United States earn, on average, between 13 and 52 cents per hour. In several states, some workers receive no wages at all.¹¹

A class-action lawsuit filed in 2023 in Alabama alleged that the state had generated hundreds of millions of dollars through prison labor while systematically denying parole to workers whose labor had become economically valuable.¹²

Reasonable people may disagree about how these systems should be understood or reformed. But understanding the debate requires understanding the history that preceded it. 

That is precisely why historical memory matters. It is about more than honoring the past. It is about understanding the forces that continue to shape the present. 

America at 250 

As the United States marks its 250th anniversary this July, Americans will celebrate the nation’s founding promises of liberty and equality. Juneteenth does not diminish those ideals. It asks Americans to examine them honestly because the gap between principle and reality is part of the American story too. 

James Baldwin once wrote, “Not everything that is faced can be changed, but nothing can be changed until it is faced.”¹³

To remember Juneteenth is to recognize that the past is never truly past, and that facing that fact remains essential to building a just and free future for all. 

What remembrance looks like in practice 

For years, Freedom United has campaigned to remove the exception clause from the 13th Amendment. We supported the Abolition Amendment when it was introduced in Congress in 2020 and again in 2023. The bill is not active today. But the system it seeks to dismantle remains in place. 

When the effort returns—and it will—we will be there. We hope you’ll be with us. 

In the meantime, remembrance is not passive. It is something we practice.  

Here’s what you can do: 

Celebrate Juneteenth: Know what the day actually commemorates—not simply the end of slavery, but the delayed arrival of freedom’s promise. 

Share this story: Awareness is the first step toward accountability. If this piece helped you understand something new, pass it on. 

Learn about prison slavery: Many people are surprised to learn that the 13th Amendment contains an exception permitting involuntary servitude as punishment for a crime.  Understanding that history is a first step toward changing it. 

Know your supply chain: Worth Rises maintains a database of more than 4,000 corporations with documented ties to prison labor. Search the brands you use and learn where products come from. 

Notice what is being erased: Pay attention to what disappears from textbooks, public records, museum exhibits, and public conversation.  

Stay connected: When opportunities arise to challenge forced labor and support meaningful reform, Freedom United will mobilize. Sign up for our updates to be part of that work.