As protests against police brutality persist and our country undergoes a national reckoning over racism, we pause to recognize Juneteenth, or Emancipation Day, and demand that the United States reckon with its defining sins.

On this day in 1865, news of the Emancipation Proclamation reached slaves in Galveston, Texas — two and a half years after President Lincoln issued it. With the surrender of Confederate General Robert E. Lee two months earlier, the Union forces were now strong enough to enforce the proclamation. The order read to Texans proclaimed, "All slaves are free. This involves an absolute equality of rights and rights of property between slave and master, and the connection heretofore existing between them becomes that between employer and hired laborer."

As millions of people join Black Americans this year in observing Juneteenth, we must reckon with the fact that our country was founded on stolen land, genocide, and human bondage, and buttressed with discriminatory policies, practices, and structures. We must recognize that no one is free until everyone is free, and that requires investing specifically in Black people and Black communities.

We are proud to share Centering Blackness: The Path to Economic Liberation for All, a framework from our partners at Community Change and the Insight Center for Community Economic Development. This framework will help leaders, advocates, and community members “embark on a serious and sustained effort to center Blackness and the Black experience as a necessary strategy to ensure economic liberation for all Americans."

We also invite you to gather with us tomorrow for the Poor People’s Campaign’s Mass Poor People's Assembly & Moral March on Washington and demand our nation’s leaders address systemic racism and poverty. The increasing urgency of a broad movement led by the most impacted is more apparent every day. 

On this Juneteenth, we are inspired by the many protesters, organizers, and leaders pushing our country forward, and are proud to work with you all in truly achieving freedom.

In Solidarity,

PolicyLink