Happy Juneteenth!

Happy Juneteenth, everyone!

Today is Juneteenth (also known as Juneteenth National Independence Day, Freedom Day, Jubilee Day, Liberation Day, and Emancipation Day), a holiday celebrating the emancipation of African-Americans who had been enslaved in the United States. It is celebrated today and commemorates the date in 1865 when Union Army General Gordon Granger arrived in Galveston, Texas, and announced to enslaved African-Americans that the Civil War had ended and they were free.

In this modern world in which we live, racism and slavery should be things of the past, but as events the world over have shown these past few years they are still alive and unfortunately well (although truthfully, it’s something that has been around still for a long time, and just seems to have come to the forefront and put under a scrupulous microscope this last little while).

So, Happy Juneteenth, everyone!

Here’s hoping the next year will see an end to racism and to any form of slavery.