JULY 4TH & JUNETEENTH

July 4Th, 1776, is celebrated here and across the country as Independence Day.

Last week, the headline in The St. Louis American, the weekly African American newspaper, called for a resurgence of a holiday called Juneteenth. The holiday commemorates June 19, 1865, when the Union Army arrived in Texas to enforce the Emancipation Proclamation, signed nearly a hundred years after the Revolutionary War, to end slavery.

Both dates celebrate men, women and children who fought to gain representation in a government they could call their own. They came from farms and towns, some with the heavy yoke of slavery, some defying brothers to join an army which would prevail through squalid conditions, underground railroads, and economic barons of the time.

The importance of one holiday need not obliterate the other. We can celebrate our national heritage and remember that justice came late for many, even as we acknowledge injustice still exists for many more.