For Many Black People Behind Bars, Juneteenth Comes With Joy and Grief
The day serves as a reminder that while chattel slavery was abolished, a new form continues in the U.S. prison system.
Juneteenth is a bittersweet day for us — and all Black people in prison holding onto the promise of freedom. Let’s start with history. The Emancipation Proclamation — issued by Abraham Lincoln on Sept. 22, 1862, during the American Civil War — declared that all slaves in the Confederacy would be “forever free.” Unfortunately, that freedom didn’t extend to the four slaveholding states not in...