Juneteenth: Progress amid the ongoing struggle for true justice and equality

We are overjoyed at the exciting news this past week around Oregon and the United States officially recognizing Juneteenth celebrations, and commemorating the emancipation of enslaved people in Texas in June 1865 nearly two and a half years after the Emancipation Proclamation.

First, Governor Kate Brown signed into law a bill to establish Juneteenth as an official state holiday in Oregon. Then, just a few days later, President Joe Biden signed the Juneteenth National Independence Day Act to establish Juneteenth as an official federal holiday.

Oregon is the only state in America to have been established as an all-white state. Celebrating Juneteenth as a legal holiday in Oregon and America matters a great deal, and brings our state and country closer to reckoning with the present impacts of a past rooted in white supremacy.

This can be a moment when we acknowledge the trauma of 4 million enslaved people, while trying to understand that trauma through the eyes of their descendants. We can make it clear that, despite social progress for Black Americans, considerable barriers continue to impede true justice and equality. These barriers go beyond 300+ years of slavery, Jim Crow, and on-going white supremacy. They include sub-standard education, discrimination in housing, lack of economic investment in Black communities, disproportionate access to quality health care, and murder by law enforcement.

By choosing to remember the last state in the South that freedom finally touched, we celebrate the shining 'promise of emancipation.' Let June 19th in Oregon and America forever be a day of celebration for current and future generations, as well as a day to remember and acknowledge the bloody path America took by delaying freedom and deferring the fulfillment of the simple words of Union General Gordon Granger that 'all slaves are free.'

Thank you,

Rosa Colquitt, PhD
Vice Chair, Democratic Party of Oregon
Chair, Democratic Party of Oregon Black Caucus

If you're able, please consider making a donation to support our work to keep Oregon blue in 2021 and beyond.

Paid for by the Democratic Party of Oregon | Not authorized by any candidate or candidate's committee | 232 NE 9th Ave, Portland OR 97232

Democratic Party of Oregon
232 NE 9th Ave.
Portland, OR 97232
United States

This email was sent to newsletter@newslettercollector.com

Reaching and communicating with Oregon Democrats and our supporters is critical for the Democratic Party of Oregon as we work to keep electing Democrats up and down the ballot.

If you'd like to only receive our most important messages, please click here. We hope you'll stay, but if you wish to no longer receive our messages, you can unsubscribe, but it will be much more difficult for us to reach you with important information on how to stay involved and elect Democrats.