Juneteenth, a Day for Celebration and Frustration
America’s progress toward racial equity has been anything but consistent — and it’s under threat yet again.
A great, but not the first.
Photo: Hulton Archive/Getty ImagesOn June 19, the US rightly celebrates the end of slavery on its soil — specifically, the day in 1865 when a Union general informed enslaved people in Galveston, Texas of their freedom. Yet on the federal Juneteenth holiday, Americans must also recognize that the nation’s movement toward racial equity has been far from smooth or consistent, and that it is yet again under threat.
Time and again, progress has elicited intense backlash that has left Black people even farther behind. In major league baseball, for example, Black athletes played an important role long before April 15, 1947 — now celebrated as Jackie Robinson Day to commemorate the sport’s integration. Moses Fleetwood “Fleet” Walker, for example, played catcher for the Toledo Blue Stockings in 1884, more than 60 years before Robinson took the field for the Dodgers. Yet the hostility of many White fans, players and team owners led the league to ban Black players in 1887. American football has a similar history: Black players were stars in the 1920s, banned in 1933 and reintegrated in 1946.