Happy Juneteenth 2026!
Today, we at the Northwest Progressive Institute join people across America in celebrating Juneteenth, our nation’s second Independence Day.
Juneteenth commemorates June 19th, 1865, when Union Major General Gordon Granger arrived in Galveston, Texas, and announced that the enslaved people of Texas were free. The declaration came more than two years after President Abraham Lincoln issued the Final Emancipation Proclamation on January 1st, 1863 (which followed a preliminary emancipation proclamation issued September 22nd, 1862) and more than two months after Robert E. Lee’s surrender at Appomattox Court House.
That delay is an enduring reminder that declaring freedom and securing freedom are not the same thing. Rights written on paper have meaning only when they are respected, enforced, and made real in people’s lives. As linguist George Lakoff has stated, freedom doesn’t stand still. It is either expanding or contracting. If we do not succeed in expanding freedom, our opposition will succeed in contracting it.
NPI commemorates Juneteenth because the struggle to build a nation founded on genuine freedom, equality, and democracy is inseparable from our mission.
https://www.nwprogressive.org/weblog/2026/06/happy-juneteenth-2026.html
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