Misleading Link Between Juneteenth and Confederate Monuments
The Claim
It is hypocritical for activists to tear down monuments to forget slavery but also to celebrate Juneteenth as a reminder of slavery.
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Emerging story
This year, President Joe Biden signed a bill that would officially recognize Juneteenth as a national holiday. Amidst this news, social media users began circulating criticism about the holiday. “We create a holiday to remember slavery. We tear down monuments to forget slavery,” one viral Facebook post said. Slight variations of the claim appeared across numerous platforms.
Misbar’s Analysis
Misbar’s analysis finds that comparing the removal of Confederate monuments to the celebration of Juneteenth is a misleading parallel. Juneteenth is not celebrated in order to remember slavery but to celebrate the important moment in American history when slavery ended. It has been celebrated for more than a century marking the day when enslaved African Americans in Texas were finally granted the freedom that the Emancipation Proclamation had established two years before. It is also a day that honors African American culture.
Motivations for the removal of Confederate monuments are also misunderstood in this context. Annette Gordon-Reed, a U.S. slavery historian, legal scholar, and member of the Presidential Initiative on Harvard and the Legacy of Slavery, told The Harvard Gazette that “History will still be taught,” and that monuments glorifying Confederate heroes have their place on battlefields and cemeteries, but that public forums are not the place for such things. She particularly notes that the Confederacy was created to try and break apart the United States and that idolization of its ideals is dishonoring all the soldiers that died defending the United States. The removal of Confederate statues is not an effort to forget slavery, but an effort to stop glorifying those who enforced slavery.
