7 Bible Verses You Should Know for Juneteenth
Juneteenth, also known as Freedom Day, commemorates June 19, 1865 — the day enslaved people in Texas finally learned they were free, more than two years after the Emancipation Proclamation.
It's a sacred moment in Black history — a celebration of liberation, resilience, and the ongoing journey toward justice. As we mark this day, we reflect on the faith that carried our ancestors, the power of community, and the God who walks with us through every trial and triumph.
Related: 7 Bible Verses You Should Know for Black Music Month
7 Bible Verses You Should Know for Juneteenth was originally published on praiseindy.com
1. Galatians 5:1
'It is for freedom that Christ has set us free.' 2. Isaiah 61:1
3. Exodus 3:7-8
'I have seen the misery of my people… I have come down to rescue them.' 4. John 8:36
'So if the Son sets you free, you will be free indeed.'
5. 📖 Psalm 146:7
'He upholds the cause of the oppressed and gives food to the hungry. The Lord sets prisoners free.' 6. Micah 6:8
'Act justly, love mercy, and walk humbly with your God.'
7. Romans 12:12
'Be joyful in hope, patient in affliction, faithful in prayer.'
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Los Angeles Times
7 hours ago
- Los Angeles Times
Jim Crow meets ICE at ‘Alligator Alcatraz'
A few years ago I came across a profoundly unnerving historical photo: A lineup of terrified, naked Black babies cowered over the title 'Alligator Bait.' As it turned out, the idea of Black babies being used as alligator bait was a beloved trope dating back to the antebellum South, though it didn't really take off until after the Civil War. The image I saw was created in 1897, just one year after Plessy vs. Ferguson established 'separate but equal' as the foundational doublespeak of segregation. With formerly enslaved people striking out and settling their own homesteads, the prevailing stereotypes deployed to justify violence against Black people were forced to evolve. We were no longer simple and primitive, in desperate need of the civilizing stewardship of white Christian slave owners. After emancipation, we became dangerous, lazy and worthless. Worth less, in fact, than the chickens more commonly used to bait alligators. White Floridians in particular so fell in love with the concept of alligators hungry for Black babies that it birthed an entire industry. Visitors to the Sunshine State could purchase souvenir postcards featuring illustrations of googly-eyed alligators chasing crying Black children. There was a popular brand of licorice called 'Little African,' with packaging that featured a cartoon alligator tugging playfully at a Black infant's rag diaper. The tagline read: 'A Dainty Morsel.' Anglers could buy fishing lures molded in the shape of a Black baby protruding from an alligator's mouth. You get the idea. When I first learned of all this, naturally, I was unmoored. I was also surprised that I'd never heard of the alligator bait slur. Why doesn't it sit alongside the minstrel, the mammy and the golliwog in our cultural memory of racist archetypes? Did it cross some unspoken line with the vulgarity of its violence? Perhaps this particular dog whistle was a tad too audible? Or was it the plausible deniability? Did people (including historians) wave it away because babies were never 'really' used as alligator bait? It's true that beyond the cultural ephemera — which includes songs (such as the ragtime tune 'Mammy's Little Alligator Bait') and mechanical alligator toys that swallow Black babies whole, over and over again — there are apparently no surviving records of Black babies sacrificed in this way. No autopsy reports, no court records proving that anyone was apprehended and convicted of said crime. But of course, why would there be? The thing I found so unnerving about the alligator bait phenomenon wasn't its literal veracity. There's no question human beings are capable of that and far worse. Without a doubt, 'civilized' people could find satisfaction — or comfort, or justice, or opportunity — in the violent slaughter of babies. Donald Trump's recently posted AI clip 'Trump Gaza,' which suggests the real world annihilation of Palestinians will give way to luxury beachfront resorts, is a shining example. The thing that haunted me about alligator bait was the glee with which the idea was embraced. It was funny. Cute. Harmless. Can't you take a joke? Now here we are, 100 years after 'Mammy's Little Alligator Bait,' and the bigots are once again using cartoon alligators to meme-ify racial violence, this time against immigrants. Just like the title 'Alligator Bait,' the Florida detention center name 'Alligator Alcatraz' serves multiple ends: It provokes sadistic yuks. It mocks. It threatens. But most crucially, it dehumanizes. 'Alligator Bait' suggests that Black people are worthless. By evoking the country's most infamous prison, 'Alligator Alcatraz' frames the conversation as one about keeping Americans safe. It suggests the people imprisoned there are not vulnerable and defenseless men and women; anyone sent to 'Alligator Alcatraz' must be a criminal of the worst sort. Unworthy of basic human rights. Fully deserving of every indignity inflicted upon them. 'Alligator Alcatraz' cloaks cruelty in bureaucratic euphemism. It's doublespeak, masking an agenda to galvanize a bloodthirsty base and make state violence sound reasonable, even necessary. It has nothing to do with keeping Americans safe. Oft-cited studies from Stanford, the Libertarian Cato Institute, the New York Times and others have shown conclusively that immigrants, those here legally and illegally, are significantly less likely to commit violent crimes than their U.S.-born neighbors. If those behind 'Alligator Alcatraz' cared at all about keeping Americans safe, they wouldn't have just pushed a budget bill that obliterates our access to healthcare, environmental protection and food safety. If they actually cherished the rule of law, they would not deny immigrants their constitutionally guaranteed right to due process. If they were truly concerned about crime, there wouldn't be a felon in the White House. As souvenir shops and Etsy stores flood with 'Alligator Alcatraz' merch, it's worth noting that none of it is played for horror. Like the cutesy alligator bait merchandise before it, these aren't monster-movie creatures with blazing eyes and razor-sharp, blood-dripping teeth. The 'Alligator Alcatraz' storefront is cartoon gators slyly winking at us from under red baseball caps: It's just a joke, and you're in on it. And it's exactly this cheeky, palatable, available-in-child-sizes commodification that exposes the true horror for those it targets: There will be no empathy, no change of heart, no seeing of the light. Dear immigrants of America: Your pain is our amusement. The thing I keep wondering is, would this cheekiness even be possible if everyone knew the alligator bait history, the nastiness of which was buried so deep that 'Gator bait' chants echoed through the University of Florida stadium until 2020? Would they still chuckle if they saw the century-old postcards circulated by people who 'just didn't know any better'? My cynical side says: Yeah, probably. But my strategic side reminds me: If history truly didn't matter, it wouldn't be continuously minimized, rewritten, whitewashed. There's truth in the old idiom: Knowledge is power. Anyone trying to keep knowledge from you, whether by banning books, gutting classrooms, denying identities or burying facts, is only trying to disempower you. That's why history, as painful as it often is, matters. Remembering the horror of alligator bait isn't about dwelling on the grotesque. It's about recognizing how cruelty gets coded into culture. 'Alligator Alcatraz' is proof that alligator bait never went away. It didn't evolve or get slicker. It's the same old, tired cruelty, rebranded and aimed at a new target. The goal is exactly the same: to manufacture consent for suffering and ensure the most vulnerable among us know where they stand — as props, as bait, as punchlines. And no joke is more vulgar than one mocking the pain of your neighbors, whether they were born in this country or not. Ezra Claytan Daniels is a screenwriter and graphic novelist whose upcoming horror graphic novel, 'Mama Came Callin',' confronts the legacy of the alligator bait trope.
Chicago Tribune
8 hours ago
- Chicago Tribune
Today in Chicago History: Stoning death of Eugene Williams triggers start of 1919 race riots
Here's a look back at what happened in the Chicago area on July 27, according to the Tribune's archives. Is an important event missing from this date? Email us. From Halas to Hester: The 32 Chicago Bears inducted into the Pro Football Hall of FameWeather records (from the National Weather Service, Chicago) 1919: Black teen Eugene Williams floated on a wooden tie past an invisible but mutually understood line that separated a Black beach at 29th Street from a white beach at 26th Street. White youths threw rocks at him, according to later investigations, and Williams, who could not swim, was hit and drowned. Although several people, white and Black, tried to revive Williams, a police officer at the 26th Street Beach was unwilling to arrest the rock throwers on the word of their Black accusers or to help Williams. Unequal justice proved to be the rule during the ensuing violence, until the four-day chaos finally was ended by the Illinois militia and a cooling rain. Williams is buried in Lincoln Cemetery in Blue Island. Vintage Chicago Tribune: Disasters!!!!! Crashes, fires, riots and more from Illinois history.1960: A Chicago Helicopter Airways chopper, on a shuttle flight between Midway and O'Hare International Airport, crashed in a Forest Park cemetery after one of its rotor blades broke off. The accident killed the two crewmen and 11 passengers, and was blamed on a metal fatigue fracture in the blade. The federal government mandated more frequent inspections of the component. 1970: Sears, Roebuck & Co. — then the world's largest retailer — announced plans to build the world's tallest building — 1,450 feet high with 110 stories. The Sears Tower opened in 1973, but was not completed until 1974. Willis Tower is no longer the tallest building in the world. But it's still a trendsetter as it turns 50 this 1,451-foot tower lost its crown as the world's tallest when it was surpassed in 1996 by Malaysia's Petronas Towers, and the American title in 2013 when New York City's One World Trade Center was completed. After decades of construction in Asian countries, it's now the 25th tallest in the world. 1970: A Sly and the Family Stone concert devolved into a riot. The show was supposed to be a goodwill offering, not only from city officials to the area's youths, but also from the band to the city to make up for more than one last-minute no-shows. Instead, the rock show disintegrated into a riot that injured 162 people, including 126 police officers. Thirty of those officers were hospitalized. Three young people were shot, though it wasn't clear by whom. Cars were overturned and set ablaze. Before its fury was exhausted, the mob rampaged through the Loop, breaking hundreds of windows and looting jewelry and department stores. Police arrested 160 people. 1982: Otto — a 450-pound gorilla who was the star of the 1976 documentary 'Otto: Zoo Gorilla' and named for disgraced former Illinois Gov. Otto Kerner — apparently scaled an 11-foot wall topped with electrical wires in an outdoor enclosure and escaped the Ape House at the Lincoln Park Zoo. He then lumbered north to the Primate House and climbed up a ramp to the Administration Building. He was sitting on the building's roof just above zoo Director Lester Fisher's office when veterinarian Tom Meehan hit Otto with tranquilizer darts. It took up to 10 zoo employees to place the gorilla on a stretcher and return him to the Ape House. Vintage Chicago Tribune: How Wrigley Field got lights and why Cubs fans had to wait past 8-8-88 to raise 'W' flag1983: After rejecting arguments that a permanent ban would be illegal, aldermen voted 42-2 to pass an ordinance — which did not name Wrigley Field or the Tribune-owned Chicago Cubs — making it illegal to conduct any sporting event between 8 p.m. and 8 a.m. in a stadium that 'contains more than 15,000 seats where any such seats are located within 500 feet of 100 or more dwelling units.' 1993: The Smashing Pumpkins released 'Siamese Dream.' Singer-guitarist Billy Corgan told the Tribune: 'I'm writing albums for people of my generation, and if the rest of the world wants to listen, fine.' Subscribe to the free Vintage Chicago Tribune newsletter, join our Chicagoland history Facebook group, stay current with Today in Chicago History and follow us on Instagram for more from Chicago's past.
Buzz Feed
16 hours ago
- Buzz Feed
I Was Raised In Purity Culture. Then I Began Wearing A Secret Purchase Under My Clothes.
I met my husband in college, and we dated for five years prior to our wedding. I brought a whole host of fear-based ideas about sexuality to our marriage. Due to purity culture, which primarily targeted girls in the 1990s with a message that their sexual purity was their most prized asset, I could not help but believe a crown of stars awaited me if I stayed a virgin, possibly until death. In my all-girl Catholic high school theology class, we had learned virginity was a gift. We were told to imagine our sexual purity as a beautifully wrapped present. If we ever felt pressured to give in to the sexual advances of our male counterparts, we were to consider what it would be like to hand our future spouse a gift with tattered wrapping paper and bedraggled ribbons. As I entered college and wrestled with my faith, the book I Kissed Dating Goodbye, written by a young pastor named Joshua Harris, caused a huge splash in Christian circles. It offered what he called a blueprint for a successful courtship that would lead to marriage and encouraged heterosexual couples to limit physical contact until the male partner was prepared to ask for the female's hand in marriage. Then sex would be blessed by God. Then sex would be safe. Prior to our engagement, I had converted to my soon-to-be husband's faith, and together we attended Bible studies and spent whole weekends with our church community. I gave away my jewelry and dressed modestly. I hoped that God would look fondly on our relationship and that once we were married, all of my worries and fears about sex and sexuality would vanish. However, the problem with a belief system that positions one's sexuality as God-given and God-approved but which can only be shared in a committed heterosexual marriage is that it's entirely transactional. Who am I as a sexual being, irrespective of my future partner(s)? was never a question I was encouraged to ask or explore before my wedding. I was given 'a gift,' I was to keep it wrapped and then I would supposedly enjoy it once I got married. The formula prescribed by purity culture did not deliver the results I expected. Committing to abstinence required me to see sex as a toxic substance outside of marriage, and there was no guidance for shifting that narrative on my wedding night. I went from being a virginal bride to one who had no idea about the mechanics of sex, what my body was capable of, what I desired, what felt good or how to communicate any of this to my partner. Once I was married, I was constantly paranoid that I was not having enough sex and that I was doing it wrong when I was having it. None of this messaging came from my husband. It was simply the byproduct of all the troubling things I'd been taught my entire life. In church circles, I heard about the importance of good wives making themselves available and pleasing to their spouses. I rarely if ever heard the same for husbands. After our first year of marriage, I became pregnant, and then a year later I became pregnant again. In spite of the grace my husband offered me during our sleepless years, my hang-ups over not having enough sex remained and even intensified. When my children were still young, I took a job teaching at a Bible college in Tennessee. I was surprised at how many of my students married while they were still undergrads. Some of them were barely out of high school. I frequently overheard these young women discussing their two bridal showers: one thrown by elders to receive housewares and another thrown by friends to receive lingerie. It was a two-pronged preparation for the bride that said: Here is what you will need for your home and for your husband. But where was the ritual to prepare a young woman who was not getting married ― but who was still a whole person? I wondered. Does she not still need a cast iron pan? Does she still not deserve beautiful undergarments? I tentatively began to look for answers, but most of the books and podcasts I found in the 2010s that spoke to sexuality within monogamy skirted the issue of female desire. I was still hearing sermons about sexual purity as an absolute, and reading blogs by women who endorsed frequent sex as a safeguard against a husband's infidelity. Then an unlikely source helped me to course correct. I read an account of an American expatriate in France who discovered that French women reportedly spent 20% of their income on lingerie. At first I couldn't believe all of these women were forking over so much money on something that most people would never see, but I realized they were doing it for themselves. To please themselves. To feel good about themselves. I started to amass my own wardrobe of lingerie. I still wore the modest suits of a professor, but underneath were the reminders that I was more than a teacher with sensible shoes. In 2018, Joshua Harris denounced I Kissed Dating Goodbye and publicly apologized for the hurt caused by it. The following year, Lutheran pastor Nadia Bolz-Weber published Shameless, an indictment of the shame-laced ways the church has indoctrinated young people about sexuality. By this point, I was beginning to lose my footing in my own marriage. My husband and I had moved across the country and were navigating new jobs and life with adolescent children. Natural growing pains were surfacing: We were two people who met before our brains were fully developed — before we knew who we truly were. The strains of our life together were pulling us apart. I started to visit social media accounts about lingerie as a way to relieve stress. Learning about the materials, the construction, the history, and the style of the pieces was soothing. I also discovered the women running these accounts, like the French women I'd read about years earlier, wore their lingerie not for a partner but for themselves. They were celebrating their own sexuality. Perhaps this was Victoria's Secret: not that she used a satin chemise to attract but that she kept a ruffle-trimmed slip in her boudoir to remind her of who she was. Seventeen years after we wed, my husband and I met in a courtroom, and, with the stroke of a judge's pen, our relationship was legally dissolved. My marriage was my only significant romantic relationship, and I mourn the familiar rhythms of that life. I am left with countless existential questions about what I do now, what I want... and an expansive wardrobe of lingerie. For the first time in over two decades, I am single. I am not afraid of falling in love again, but I am afraid of abandoning myself to someone else's narrative about who I am. I go on dating apps, sift through pictures of men flexing their muscles and cuddling their dogs, and then I delete the apps. In therapy, I discuss my hang-ups about all of this. 'What is the purpose of dating? For you?' my therapist asks. I do not have a clear answer, but I know those two words, 'for you,' are essential. I am 43 years old and just now beginning to unpack what sex and monogamy mean for me — and not because a pastor or book club defined it for me. I am still a person of deep faith, but I am no longer a member of a church. I am in a season of deconstructing beliefs that have done me far more harm than help. The path forward for me may be paved with rubble, but it is edged with lace and satin. In this new chapter, which I could never have envisioned as a young newlywed, I realize what all these lingerie-loving women I've come across know about intimate apparel: It is a symbol of their superpower. They wear pieces that allow them to simply feel good in their bodies. When we feel good in our bodies, we can talk back to the shame. We can celebrate the marvelous capacity our bodies have to experience desire and pleasure. This is a wondrous thing ― no matter one's size, shape, skin color or creed. Obviously, wearing lingerie is just one of countless ways through which a person can access that freedom, but for me (and many others), it serves as a gentle yet potent reminder of my commitment to seeking the kind of liberation that has eluded me for much too long. Recently I purchased a luxurious royal blue loungewear set. It sits in a gold cardboard box, tied with a matching royal blue ribbon. I have not decided if I will wear the set for a special occasion, like when I find true love again, or simply when I'm having a good hair day. What I do know is that the decision is not one to fear — especially because I am the one making it.
