What is Juneteenth? The meaning behind the June 19 federal holiday
Juneteenth commemorates June 19, 1865. That was when Union General Gordon Granger arrived in Galveston, Texas, and announced that over 250,000 enslaved people were free, more than two years after the Emancipation Proclamation was issued by President Abraham Lincoln and declared slaves in Confederate states were free. Originally celebrated by newly freed Black communities in Texas with religious services, barbecues and symbolic traditions like discarding clothing worn during enslavement, the holiday has since grown beyond Texas and the South.
Though festivities resurfaced in Black communities during the 1960s Civil Rights Movement as a way to honor their legacy, the holiday — sometimes referred to by other names such as 'Second Independence Day,' 'Freedom Day,' 'Emancipation Day' or 'Black Fourth of July' — gained national attention once again during the 2020 Black Lives Matter movement. The movement inspired Congress and Biden to create an official federal holiday to honor Juneteenth the following year.
Modern Juneteenth festivities are vibrant and celebratory, and typically involve outdoor activities like cookouts and picnics. Large community events are also held: Last year, the White House hosted a concert on the South Lawn for Juneteenth and Black Music Month. This year, Juneteenth events across the country include things like film screenings, festivals, concerts and other community cultural events.
In an opinion piece for the Arizona Republic, Greg Moore wrote, 'It's a good time to find a community of people and celebrate the racial progress we've made over the last few decades…And given all the separation Black Americans have faced through history, it would be fitting to celebrate in a community gathering — the bigger, the better.'
Some people may prefer to use Juneteenth as a day of reflection, education and remembrance. That could include going to a museum, some of which are hosting special programs for the holiday on Black American history. The National Civil Rights Museum in Memphis, Tenn., is marking Juneteenth with free admission and educational activities for families.
This year, many Juneteenth events have been scaled back or canceled because companies and local governments are cutting funding for diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) initiatives.
You can honor Juneteenth even if you are not Black, Karida Brown, a sociology professor at Emory University, told the Associated Press. Brown explained that the history of slavery in America is all of our history, and it's important to recognize 'the good, the bad, the ugly, the story of emancipation and freedom for your Black brothers and sisters under the Constitution of the law.'
However, Moore wrote in the Arizona Republic that it's important not to let Juneteenth go the way of holidays like Cinco de Mayo, in which cultures are reduced to harmful stereotypes. He's afraid Black culture can be 'warped beyond recognition' during disrespectful celebrations. 'There shouldn't be any blackface or watermelon jokes,' he said.
While red, green and black are colors associated with Juneteenth — those are the colors of the pan-African flag, which represents the African diaspora and the unity of Black people — the Juneteenth flag is red, white and blue. It was created in 1997 by community organizer and activist Ben 'Boston Ben' Haith in order to give the holiday a unifying symbol.
'For so long, our ancestors weren't considered citizens of this country,' Haith said in an interview with Capital B. 'But realistically, and technically, they were citizens. They just were deprived of being recognized as citizens. So I thought it was important that the colors portray red, white, and blue, which we see in the American flag.'
The star in the center stands for two things: Texas, where Juneteenth began, and, according to Haith, the white burst around the star symbolizes a new star being born — representing a new beginning for Black Americans. The red arc below it represents a horizon, signifying progress and hope for the future.
While Juneteenth is now a federal holiday, people employed in the private sector are not legally required to recognize or observe the holiday. In turn, privately owned shops, restaurants, grocery stores and other retail businesses will likely keep normal hours on the holiday unless they choose to honor the holiday in some way.
Most major banks, as well as the stock market, are closed on Juneteenth. So is the post office and other federal offices. Public schools and libraries are typically closed as well.
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When You Don't Look Like Anything
1950–73: 'Don't Stare' There was ambivalence about performers in my family. Part of this was caused by middle-class-Negro hypervigilance about drawing attention, especially bad attention. I still get nervous when children are out of control in public. Growing up in 1960s Baltimore, my siblings and I did not dare be out of control in public. In our wildest dreams we could not have imagined a meltdown in, say, Hutzler's department store, where colored people were not allowed to try on clothes, or to return items that didn't work out. When my aunt Esther and I went shopping, she'd throw me her sit-up-straight eye. As Baltimore began to be less segregated, she went to exceptionally fancy stores. I remember sitting in a chic, hushed fur salon, straining not to do anything that would draw attention to myself as she tried on a mink stole. My inhibitions weren't only about race; they were also about sin. My maternal grandmother was a Billy Graham–loving evangelical Christian. Grandma's effect was far-reaching. We lived all the way across town, and my parents were not evangelical. Yet we were not allowed to dance on Sunday. I learned very early that one of my behaviors was unacceptable: staring. 'Don't stare.' 'Close your mouth.' Staring was impolite. I should especially refrain from staring at white people. Stop looking at them. They are not interested in you. Why are you so interested in them? But I couldn't help myself: I stared at everyone, of every color, especially everyone who was different from me in some way. But Grandma was also interested in white people. She arranged for my brother Deaver and me to attend a Christian camp in Pennsylvania, where I believe we were the only colored children. Deaver, then 6, had blue eyes and light-tan hair. As we packed for camp, family and friends made much of the fact that people would probably not really know that Deaver was a little colored boy. He'd be okay. They said less about how I would fare. But it turned out all right. I have no bad memories, except for the one about the white girl who tried to wash my hair. The result was, as we Black women say, 'hair all over my head,' and my mother was beside herself about this when she came to pick me up. And yet Grandma's preoccupation with sin didn't keep her from being crazy about Sweetheart, who in many ways was transgressive. Grandma and Sweetheart were about the same age. They had grown up like sisters, though Sweetheart was actually Grandma's niece. Sweetheart had left Baltimore in her 20s, gone to New York, passed as 'Spanish,' become a chorus girl, and was 'kept' (by a man). She left her daughter with Grandma, who already had eight children of her own. Sweetheart then moved to that faraway place with movie stars and Disneyland—California. She was gorgeous, charming, and funny. She sparkled. When she periodically returned to Baltimore, in fur coats and always with a different boyfriend, she was received like royalty. I never said more than the required 'Hello, Auntie' before vanishing into another room. I was intimidated by her glamour. But when I found myself in San Francisco in the early 1970s, I sought her out. I'd left Baltimore in September 1971 with $80 and an overnight bag, looking for the revolution. The revolution was finished on the East Coast, but embers of it still glowed out West. I made my way up the coast from San Diego, stopping in Belmont, California, then a humdrum town not far from the airport where single stewardesses and the like lived in flat apartment buildings with tiny swimming pools. I worked for a year at a drive-in movie theater until I landed a job coordinating tutors at a junior college. My boss and his wife were Black, proud, and beautiful. They looked like they'd stepped out of a Hollywood movie. As activists who'd participated in the upheaval at Berkeley, they emanated late-'60s glamour. Dave never sat behind his desk, choosing instead to perch on a counter, puffing on a cigarillo, musing philosophically or railing against injustice. Jazz played in the background. The point of everything, he told me, was to change the world! He had a plan for me: 'You need to get your Ph.D.!' In what? 'Education!' I continued north to San Francisco. I was on a lark, with no place to live, and no real plan, but San Francisco was a lot more alive than Belmont. It was enchanting! The bay, the fog, the chill, the cable cars! I felt inspired—but to do what, I had no idea. I tried to get a job volunteering as a stage manager at a theater in town, only to learn that it was a union house. But I saw that they offered acting classes, so I decided to try one, just for fun. I auditioned and somehow was accepted. I hadn't realized the place was a serious conservatory—turned out I'd have to go to school all day. Sweetheart and Eddie, her third or fourth husband, picked me up at the Greyhound station. Eddie, Chinese American, was a former chef who spoiled us nightly with delicious meals. His English appeared to be minimal, but it was hard to tell, because Auntie, now 80, and still sparkling, was a nonstop raconteur. The tenant in Auntie's basement apartment had just left, so I took it, for $75 a month. I was the least likely person to wind up in a conservatory to study acting. I had no idea that people actually 'studied' acting in the way that was unfolding in front of me. My classmates pirouetted down the hallways of the school. They sang Broadway tunes as they strode up and down the hills of San Francisco. From the March 2024 issue: How a playwright became one of the most incisive social critics of our time One evening when I came home from acting class, Sweetheart handed me a letter from Grandma, who by then had been overtaken by dementia. 'I hear you want to become an actress,' she had written in a messy scrawl. 'Please don't take off your clothes. Here's five dollars, buy yourself a new dress. Love, Grandma.' Grandma's effect was still far-reaching. Part of me wondered if what I was doing was sinful. I put the $5 in my pocket, and taped the letter inside my journal. If I was the least likely person to end up at that conservatory, the most likely person was a tall woman with a Philadelphia Main Line accent and vocal resonance. She looked like Katharine Hepburn. Everything she did had a sense of urgency. One night she rushed into the café where we'd planned to have a cheap dinner and said: 'Beethoven's Ninth starts in a few minutes at the cathedral! Let's go.' We bolted the five blocks to Grace Cathedral, on Nob Hill. After only the first two words of 'Ode to Joy' — O Freunde —my perpetual sense of non-belongingness was transformed into a sense of oneness. I was one with the chorus. I was one with the music. I was one with it all. The next morning, my forehead was on fire. 'Can a performance give you the flu?' I asked our yoga teacher. She assured me that all was well. I had no disease. My chakras were opening and Beethoven was the cause. 1976: 'You Don't Look Like Anything' The acting class turned into a three-year commitment at the American Conservatory Theater, where I completed an M.F.A. in acting. When you finished conservatory and hit the road, your first stop was an agent's office. I walked into the office of an agent who had a deal to meet the few of us who knew nothing about the business. I'd barely sat down on the couch when she stated perfunctorily: 'I won't be able to send you out.' Long pause. 'You will antagonize my clients.' 'Antagonize?' 'You don't look like anything.' Another long pause. 'Will you go as Black or white?' This is when I finally got it, about the staring. Stop looking at them. Why are you so interested in them? They are not interested in you. About 20 years ago, I met a bull rider from Shoshone, Idaho, named Brent Williams. Here's a photo of him, by the great photographer Diana Walker. We was in West Jordan, Utah. And I had this bull shove my face right into the metal chutes. Some buddies drove me to the hospital. Took, like, five hours to sew me up. When they straightened my nose, I had to be at a rodeo that night. I didn't really wanna go under the anesthesia, or however you say that word. So I told 'em just to do it without it. They shove these two rods up your nose, and work their way up, and that straightens your nose all up. Felt like they was shoving it clear through my brains and it was gonna come out the top of my head. And everyone that saw it, they said it should have killed me. Shove my face right into the metal chutes: Over the past two decades, I've said those words thousands of times. But it wasn't until a few months ago that Brent's words knocked on the door of my subconscious and released a memory into full consciousness: 'You don't look like anything.' Long pause. 'Will you go as Black or white?' A Shoshone bull rider gave me the words to express what I'd felt on that agent's couch. The casting couch holds many different kinds of offenses. 1977: New Rhythms, New Intentions A simple A-frame building with a huge wraparound porch in the Sierras near Lake Tahoe, California, was the headquarters of the Squaw Valley Community of Writers, a week-long conference where wannabe writers like me enjoyed tutorials with big shots: poets, novelists, screenwriters, directors. The place was peppered with East Coast literati, but the vibe wasn't as pretentious as a certain East Coast theater workshop I'd attended where one of the directors walked around with a cigarette holder and a coat over his shoulders. No need to genuflect to Frank Pierson, who'd won the Best Screenplay Oscar for Dog Day Afternoon and been nominated for another, for Cool Hand Luke. No hush fell when Sam Shepard ambled into the beat-up saloon, and made his way to the pool table. I was in the hang on the wraparound porch when a car full of poet-teachers crossed the field and stopped in front of us. A rail-thin poet-teacher stepped out. He looked like a monk who'd been on a month-long fast. The guy had presence. He gave a public reading. I sat in the front row—nothing between us but a music stand. One of his poems was quite brief but, like Beethoven's 'Ode,' it caused a physical reaction. The next morning, all my muscles were sore, as if I'd just done a massive full-body workout or been beat up. Or was it the flu? At the welcome cocktail party that night, I walked right up to the poet and told him that I'd woken up with aching muscles and that I thought his poem was the cause. His face lit up. 'That's because I wrote that poem as a curse against my ex-wife.' he stated. The power of language comes from its intention. 'Ode to Joy,' with lyrics from Friedrich Schiller's poem, had been full of good intentions. The poet's poem was full of bad intentions. His poem was written to make somebody feel some pain. As I developed my own artistic approach in the years to come, I never forgot this. 1979: Gatekeepers and 'Hostile Circumstances' I'm in my fifth-floor walk-up in New York City. I'm living gig by gig now because I chose to leave a very fine tenure-track position at an excellent university for the sake of my 'art.' Freed from the demands of being junior faculty, I walk dogs. I work as a temp in a JCPenney basement office. I work in the complaint department at KLM Airlines. (The complaint department was crucial to my development as a dramatist. Those letters of complaint were filled with drama and emotion.) One Sunday morning I hear two unusual voices coming out of the radio. By now my study of people's speech and its effect has become for me a lifelong project. Drawn to the rhythmic differences in their vocal patterns, I grab a tape recorder and press 'Record.' Turns out, the interview had originally taken place in 1959. This is a five-minute extract of a 20-minute conversation. Mike Wallace: Our guest was an unknown, unpublished writer until early this year, when her play A Raisin in the Sun came to Broadway. And was voted by the New York Drama Critics as the best play of the year. Better even than plays by Tennessee Williams, Archibald MacLeish, and Eugene O'Neill. And now to our story. One night, Lorraine Hansberry, a girl who had dabbled in writing, made a brash announcement to her husband. She was going to sit down and write an honest and accurate drama about Negroes. John Chapman, the drama critic for the New York Daily News, wrote that he has great respect for your play, but he feels that part of the acclaim may be a sentimental reaction—an admirable 'gesture,' I think is the way that he put it—to the fact that you are a Negro, and one of the few Negroes ever to have written a good Broadway play. Lorraine Hansberry: I've heard this alluded to in other ways—I didn't see Mr. Chapman's piece. I would imagine that if I were given the award because they wanted to give it to a Negro, it'd be the first time in the history of this country that anyone had ever been given anything for being a Negro. I don't think it's a very complimentary assessment of an honest piece of a work. Or of his colleagues' intent. Wallace: Well, let me quote him. He said, 'If one sets aside the one unusual fact that it is a Negro work, A Raisin in the Sun becomes no more than a solid and enjoyable commercial play.' Hansberry: Well, I've heard this said, too. I don't know quite what people mean. If they are trying honestly to analyze a play, dramaturgically, there's no such assessment; you can't say that if you take away the American character of something then it just becomes, you know, something else … The Negro character of these people is intrinsic to the play; it's important to it. If it's a good play, it's good with that. Wallace: Is it fair to say that even in proportion, very few Negroes have distinguished themselves … as playwrights, novelists, and poets? … How come? Hansberry: Whether they've distinguished themselves is kind of difficult to discuss because we always have to keep in mind the circumstances and the framework that Negroes do anything in America—which of course is a hostile circumstance. We've been writing poetry since, you know, the 17th century in this country, been writing plays that simply never see the light of day, because the circumstance, as I say, is hostile. Wallce: But the same is not true in the case of Negro athletes, Negro entertainers. Hansberry: Yes, well— Wallace: I think in proportion there are more of them who become hugely successful. Hansberry: Yes, of course, because one of the features of American racism is that it has a particular place where it allows Negroes to express themselves! We're not very warm to the idea of Negro intellectual exploration of any kind in this country. We presume, or at least the racists do—not me—that it's all right to display physical or musical or other features like that, but don't go writing and don't go trying to suggest that anything cerebral is within our sphere, you see … There're any number of professional playwrights who simply don't get their scripts read by Broadway producers. So I'd be the last person to say that it's because they write poorly. An awful lot of poor scripts get to Broadway and, uh, I don't think that's the reason why theirs don't. Wallace: What is the reason why theirs don't? Hansberry: Racial discrimination in the industry, of course. Daniel Pollack-Pelzner: The theater world has never understood Lorraine Hansberry The relationship between the gatekeepers and those of us who do not fit their picture depends on, to use Miss Hansberry's word, circumstances. In 1993, 34 years after that recording was made, Toni Morrison would win the Nobel Prize. This would change how Black-women writers and intellectuals are regarded, and significantly open up opportunities for them. It did for me. 1979: Chasing That Which Is Not Me While still at acting school, I'd sought new dramatic forms. At that time, the American playwrights who were getting their work produced were white heterosexual-presenting males. Like others across the country, but not so many at my conservatory, I thought that our art form could benefit from fewer stereotypes, and from greater particularity, more physical details in characters who lived on our stages. I also thought the sonic life of the theater could use new rhythms, new intentions—like when bebop emerged on the jazz scene. I drew inspiration from something my grandfather used to say when we were kids: 'If you say a word often enough, it becomes you.' In 1979, I set out with a tape recorder to record unique voices, unique stories, with the intention of becoming American word for word. My tape recorder was soon an appendage. I would interview people around the country, especially in moments of disruption and discord. It was in those moments that people spoke in sometimes-profound ways—as they tried to make sense out of disarray, tried to put together the exploded fragments of assumptions that follow catastrophe. This required chasing that which is not me. It was a chase that would never end. I called the overall project, which now includes about 18 plays (the first 12 never made it to major stages), ' On the Road: A Search for American Character.' It meant embodying the words of people who were very different from me and with whom I did not agree, and absorbing them into my heart. What have I learned after interviewing thousands of Americans? Most do believe 'you can make it if you try.' Even rebellion is a sign of belief in that credo. Why protest for fairness, equality, and dignity if you don't think those things can exist? The Martinican poet and philosopher Édouard Glissant, a close comrade of Frantz Fanon, left revolution behind in favor of what he called the 'poetics of relation.' 'Sometimes,' Glissant wrote, 'by taking up the problems of the Other, it is possible to find oneself.' The not-me and the me are related. In my work, my goal was to get to us. April 12, 2015: 'Just a Glance' Freddie Gray is arrested and beaten. He dies in police custody. The beating is filmed. Riots explode in Baltimore. I interview the man who took the video, Kevin Moore: The screams was what woke me outta my sleep. So I jumped up and threw some clothes on and went out to see what was going on. And then I came out that way, and I'm like, 'Holy shit!' They had him all bent up and he was handcuffed and, like, face down on his stomach. But they had the heels of his feet, like, almost in his back? And he was handcuffed at the time. And they had the knee in the neck, and that pretty much explains the three cracked vertebrae and crushed larynx, 80 percent of his spinal cord being severed and stuff. And then when they picked him up, I had to zoom in to get a closer look at his face. You could see the pain in his face. On Mount Street, [they] pulled him out again! To put leg shackles on him. You put leg shackles on a man that could barely walk to the paddy wagon? Then you toss him in the back of the paddy wagon like a dead animal. You know what I'm saying? Then you don't even put a seat belt on him. So basically, he's handcuffed, shackled, sliding back and forth in a steel cage, basically. I was like, Man, somebody has to see this. You know what I mean? I have to film this. I just basically called every news station that I could and just got the video out there! I asked Moore what triggered the incident. Eye contact. That's how the officers, I guess, wrote the paperwork: that Freddie made eye contact. And he looked suspicious. Oh. 'And that gave us probable cause to' … do whatever. We know the truth, y'know what I'm saying? Just a glance. The eye-contact thing, it's like a trigger. That's all it takes here in Baltimore—just a glance. 'Just a glance.' Don't stare. Why are you so interested in those people? They are not interested in you. 2018: Brokenness and the Promise of Fairness I'm in Montgomery, Alabama, to do my pilgrimage to the National Memorial for Peace and Justice —commonly known as the 'lynching memorial.' While there I am going to interview Bryan Stevenson, its founder. From a distance, the memorial is beautiful and majestic. In close proximity to the columns that constitute the memorial, a story of terror unfolds. There are 800 steel columns, each representing a county. On the columns are etched the names of people who were lynched there. Here's a portion of what Stevenson told me: Some of these were what we call 'public-spectacle lynchings,' where thousands of people came downtown and watched Black men, women, and children being burned alive. Some of these lynchings are as recent as 1949, 1950. I had a case not that long ago where we tried to stop an execution. The man was scheduled to be executed in 30 days. And I learned that he suffered from intellectual disability. Our courts have banned the execution of people with intellectual disability. And so we went to the trial court and said, 'You can't execute him. He's intellectually disabled.' And the trial court said, 'Too late. You should have raised that years ago.' And I went to the state court, and they said, 'Too late.' The appeals court said, 'Too late.' The federal court said, 'Too late.' Every court I went to said, 'Too late.' And we went to the U.S. Supreme Court, and they reviewed our motion, and about an hour before the scheduled execution, the clerk called me and said, 'Yeah, the Supreme Court's going to deny your motion. You're too late.' And I got on the phone with this man and I said, 'I'm so sorry, but I can't stop this execution.' He started to cry. It's literally 50 minutes before the execution, I'm holding the phone, and the man is just sobbing. And then he said, 'Please don't hang up. There's something important I have to say to you.' And he tried to say something to me, but in addition to being intellectually disabled, he stuttered when nervous. He was trying to say something, but he couldn't get his words out. Tears were just running down my face. And then he said to me: 'Mr. Stevenson, I want to thank you for representing me. I want to thank you for fighting for me.' The last thing he said to me was, 'Mr. Stevenson, I love you for trying to save my life.' He hung up the phone. They pulled him away. They strapped him to a gurney. They executed him. And I thought: I can't do this anymore. I just can't. Something about it just shattered me. And I was thinking about how broken he was, and I just couldn't understand: Why do we want to kill broken people? What is it about us that when we see brokenness, we get angry? All of my clients are broken people. I represent the broken. Everybody I represent has been broken by poverty or disability or addiction or racism. And then I realized that the system I work in is a broken system. And in that moment something said, You better think about why you do what you do if you're not gonna do it anymore. And it was in that moment that I realized why I do what I do. And it surprised me. I don't do what I do because I've been trained as a lawyer. I don't do what I do because it's about human rights. I don't do what I do because if I don't do it, no one will. I do what I do because I'm broken, too. It's in brokenness that we understand our need for grace, our need for mercy. Brokenness helps us appreciate justice. It's in brokenness that we begin to crave redemption. That we understand the power of recovery. It's the broken among us that actually can teach us what it means to be human. Because if you don't understand the ways in which you can be broken by poverty or neglect or abuse or violence or suffering or bigotry, then you don't recognize the urgency in overcoming poverty and abuse and neglect and bigotry. I even feel broken by this history. When I was a little boy, everybody had to get their polio shot. I was, like, 5. Black people had to go through the back door. So we line up out back. They gave all the shots to the white kids before they gave shots to the Black kids. They had little sugar cubes they were giving the white kids, and by the time they got to the Black kids, they ran out of sugar cubes. The nurses were tired. And they just had lost their capacity to be kind to these little children. And so they were grabbing these Black kids and giving them these needles. And my sister was in front of me, and when she was next, she was so terrified, she looked to my mother, and she said, 'Please, Mom. Please, please don't let them do this.' And they grabbed my sister, and they pulled her aside, and took the needle, and they jabbed it into her arm. And they pulled me aside, and they were about to jab me. And then all of a sudden I heard glass breaking: And my sweet, loving mother had gone over to a wall, picked up a table of beakers and glasses, and was slamming them against the wall. And she was screaming: 'This is not right! This is not right! Y'all should not have kept us out there all day! This is not right!' And the doctor came running in and said, 'Call the police.' And two Black ministers came running over and said, 'Please, doctor. Please, sir. Please don't call the police. We're sorry. We're gonna get her out of here.' One of the ministers fell to his knees. Was, like, just begging: 'Please, please. Please give the other kids their shot.' And he persuaded them not to call the police, and to give the other Black kids their shots. And so I got my polio shot. They didn't arrest my mom, which I was happy about. But you can't have a memory like that without it creating a kind of injury. A consciousness of hurt. That's what I mean when I say I'm broken, right? That consciousness of hurt creates a kind of anxiety that requires a response. I just think a lot of us were taught that you just have to find a way to silently live with your brokenness, with this injury, with that memory. And I don't think that's the way forward. I'm looking for ways to not be silent. Stevenson believes in the promise of treating humans with dignity, as expressed by a law that should keep an intellectually disabled human from being executed. Stevenson believed in that promise all the way up to 50 minutes before the scheduled execution, when the Supreme Court denied his final appeal. Which is when he realized that he works with broken people in broken systems where promises are broken. From the June 2024 issue: The lynching that sent my family north Stevenson's mother believed in the promise that she and her children should be treated equally. That's why she screamed, 'This is not right! This is not right!' When that promise was broken, his mother indicted the system. The preacher believed in the promise, which is why he got down on his knees and begged the doctor not to call the police and to give the other kids their shot. He surely knew that this promise was not yet realized in 1960s Delaware, where this scene took place—but he would not have begged if he did not believe that the promise of fairness was in sight. 2025: Errantry and Hope It's around broken promises that we have a chance at restoring, changing, improving. But of course we need a deep belief in the promise to do that. I am particularly interested in what happens to language when a promise is broken. Sometimes the shards make something intoxicating. Such an assemblage of broken shards can be found Atopolis: for Édouard Glissant, an extraordinary 2014 painting by the late African American artist Jack Whitten, which is being exhibited at the Museum of Modern Art through August 2. Glissant, the Martinican poet and philosopher whose 'poetics of relation' I mentioned earlier, said: 'The thought of errantry is not apolitical nor is it inconsistent with the will to identity, which is, after all, nothing other than the search for a freedom within particular surroundings. One who is errant (who is no longer traveler, discoverer, or conqueror) strives to know the totality of the world yet already knows he will never accomplish this—and knows that is precisely where the threatened beauty of the world resides.' Whitten wrote the following about Atopolis: Elsewhere, Whitten wrote: 'Ever since white imperialist entrepreneurs forced us into slavery, Black identity has been linked to our not having a 'sense of place.' This 'sense of place' for us had to be created through hard work involving all of our faculties of being.' In America, that hard work has been done with courage by individuals who have, to some extent, found 'us' through: 1. Unique meetings of their 'me'-ness and their 'not me'–ness. (Sometimes there was bloodshed around that meeting.) 2. Recognizing when good intentions become bad intentions. 3. Practicing hospitality. 4. Manifesting grace. 5. Understanding that, as Senator Cory Booker once told me: 'Black folks have to resurrect hope every day.' Amazing Grace In 2015, I interviewed the late Congressman John Lewis, and then portrayed him in my play and film Notes From the Field. I been going back to Selma every year since 1965, to commemorate the anniversary of Bloody Sunday, that took place on March 7, 1965. But we usually stop in Birmingham for a day. And then we go to Montgomery for a day. And then we go to Selma. On one trip to Montgomery, we stopped at First Baptist Church, the church that was pastored by the Reverend Ralph Abernathy. It's the same church where I met Dr. Martin Luther King and the Reverend Abernathy, in the spring of 1958. A young police officer—the chief—came to the church to speak on behalf of the mayor, who was not available. The church was full. Black. White. Latino. Asian American. Members of Congress. Staffers. Family members, children, and grandchildren. 'What happened in Montgomery 52 years ago durin' the Freedom Rides was not right,' the chief said. 'The police department didn't show up. They allowed an angry mob to come and beat you,' and he said, 'Congressman? I'm sorry for what happened. I want to apologize. This is not the Montgomery that we want Montgomery to be. This is not the police department that I want to be the chief of. Before any officers are hired,' he said, 'they go through trainin'. They have to study the life of Rosa Parks. The life of Martin Luther King Jr. They have to visit the historic sites of the movement. They have to know what happened in Birmingham, and what happened in Montgomery, and what happened in Selma.' He said, 'I want you to forgive us.' He said, 'To show the respect that I have for you and for the movement, I want to take off my badge and give it to you.' And the church was so quiet. No one sayin' a word. And I stood up to accept the badge. And I started cryin'. And everybody in the church started cryin'. And I said, 'Officer. Chief. I cannot accept your badge. I'm not worthy to accept your badge. [ Long pause.] Don't you need it?' He said, 'Congressman Lewis, I can get another one. I want you to have my badge!' And I took it. And I will hold on to it forever. But he hugged me. I hugged him. I cried some more. And you had Democrats and Republicans in the church. Cryin '. And his young deputy assistant—a young African American—was sittin' down. He couldn't stand. He cried so much, like a baby, really. It was the first time that a police chief in any city where I visited, or where I got arrested or beaten durin' the '60s, ever apologized. It was a moment of grace. It was a moment of reconciliation. The chief was very young—he was not even born 52 years ago. So he was offerin' an apology and to be forgiven on behalf of his associates, his colleagues of the past … For the police chief to come and apologize, to ask to be forgiven—it felt so good, and at the same time so freein' and liberatin'. I felt like, you know, I'm not worthy. You know, I'm just one. I'm just one of the many people who were beaten. It is amazing grace. You know the line in there, 'Saved a wretch like me?' In a sense, it's saying that we all have fallen short! 'Cause we all just tryin' to just make it! We all searching! As Dr. King said, we were out to redeem the soul of America. But we first have to redeem ourselves. This message—this act of grace, of the badge—says to me, 'Hold on.' And, 'Never give up. Never give in. Never lose faith. Keep the faith.' Keep the faith, yes. But don't look away.
Hypebeast
a day ago
- Hypebeast
Visionary Painter Raymond Saunders Dies at 90
Summary Raymond Saunders, the radical American artist known for his radical approach to abstraction and assemblage, passed away at the page of 90. His death was confirmed in a joint statement co-published by his representing galleries — Casemore, Andrew Kreps and David Zwirner — earlier this week. Saunders' oeuvre is defined by his resistance to categorization. Through texture, symbolism and material he challenged the viewer to reconsider assumptions about Black identity and cultural expression. In his assemblage-style artworks gestural brushwork sits beside vibrant color fields, notational markings and found objects, and served as a means of interrogating the dense fabric of American history. News of his passing follows the recent close ofFlowers from a Black Gardenat the Carnegie Museum of Art, where he took art classes growing up. The exhibition marked the first major museum retrospective for the two-time National Endowment for the Arts Awards recipient. Born in Pittsburgh in 1934, Saunders received a BFA from Carnegie Institute of Technology, and later moved to Oakland to pursue an MFA the California College of Arts and Crafts, where he became a professor. Saunders leaves behind a legacy of fearless experimentation through bodies of work that bolsters the autonomy and expansivity of Black artisthood. In his 1967 essayBlack Is a Colorhe wrote: 'i'm not here to play to the gallery i am not responsible for anyone's entertainment. i am responsible for being as fully myself, as man and artist, as i possibly can be, while allowing myself to hope that in the effort some light, some love, some beauty may be shed upon the world, and perhaps some inequities put right.'
Los Angeles Times
a day ago
- Los Angeles Times
A Times investigation: As west Altadena burned, L.A. County fire trucks stayed elsewhere
West Altadena was burning, and no one was there to save it. More than 40 Los Angeles County fire trucks surrounded the Palisades fire, where an inferno was entering its 17th hour. An additional 64 fire trucks fanned out across east Altadena and neighboring areas, battling a blaze that had sparked in Eaton Canyon nine hours earlier. But in west Altadena — where thousands of structures would burn and all but one of the 19 deaths from the Eaton fire would occur — there was just one county fire truck as the flames spread at 3:08 a.m. on Jan. 8, according to automatic vehicle locator data obtained by The Times. 'We were abandoned,' said Sofia Vidal, 57, one of more than a dozen residents interviewed by The Times who said they stayed dousing flames through the night with no firefighters in sight. 'I never heard a siren.' Six months after the fire, the anger is palpable, with residents of the racially diverse unincorporated area, long a refuge for Black families, convinced that they suffered from weaker fire protection than whiter, wealthier areas near the Palisades fire. The sense of neglect is so intense that nearly 1 in 5 residents believes the county Fire Department let the town burn on purpose, according to an Altadena-based public interest research firm that interviewed more than 1,200 residents. 'Am I grateful for firemen? Not at all,' said Vidal, who fled her home with her husband at 5:45 a.m. after burning squirrels began to fall from their palm tree. 'Did they fail me miserably? Absolutely.' The L.A. County Fire Department's top brass has described the destruction in west Altadena as almost inevitable. The wind was too intense. The flames were too violent. The whole night, unprecedented. But the vehicle locator data, which show that most county fire trucks didn't shift into west Altadena until long after it was ravaged by fire, complicate the narrative. How much could have been saved, residents wonder, if firefighters focused on their neighborhood instead? L.A. County Fire Chief Anthony Marrone said the lack of fire trucks in west Altadena probably boiled down to 'human error' by fire officials who decided where the trucks should move. Those officials — from the county as well as other agencies — were part of the 'unified incident command' stationed for most of the fire at the Rose Bowl in Pasadena. 'Why didn't we do a better job of dividing resources between east and west Altadena, right? That's a fair question,' Marrone said. 'What was going on? What were the people doing? 'Did people who were working west not accurately communicate the dire circumstances that they were faced with?' said Marrone, who said he was at the Rose Bowl that night pleading with agencies across the region to send more trucks to the Eaton fire. 'Or was there a lack of resources? Or were both sides of the fire equally challenging? ... I don't know which one of those it is. It's probably a little bit of all of that.' Marrone said it's possible that other fire agencies sent vehicles to focus on west Altadena, but his department didn't track their locations. The cascade of events leading to the tragedy in west Altadena began when the Los Angeles Fire Department failed to pre-deploy fire trucks to Pacific Palisades amid dire wind warnings, forcing the county to pitch in. But west Altadena suffered from more than being the last place to catch fire in a day full of infernos. The vehicle locator data, according to some former L.A. city and county fire officials, point to a failure within the incident command coordinating the county's response, led that night by Deputy Fire Chiefs Eleni Pappas and Albert Yanagisawa. A growing fire is broken up into divisions, with supervisors — often battalion chiefs — communicating the fire conditions in their divisions up the chain to incident commanders, who use the information to decide where to position fire trucks. Incident commanders, the former officials said, should pay attention to the 'big picture' — not just where flames are raging, but where they're headed. That means sending fire patrols — vehicles equipped with a pump, hose and water — to nearby neighborhoods to spot whether the fire has jumped with the wind. And it means quickly repositioning firefighters from the biggest eruption to small but growing ones, where they may have more impact. Only one county fire patrol stopped west of Lake Avenue, the dividing line between east and west Altadena, during the first 12 hours of the Eaton fire, the vehicle locator data show, with assistant and battalion chiefs staying out of the heart of the neighborhood. Most county fire trucks didn't move from the Eaton Canyon area, where the fire first erupted, until west Altadena was well on its way to burning to the ground. Yanagisawa said incident commanders 'did their very best' to battle a fire that dramatically outpaced their resources, with hurricane-force winds pushing the flames in different directions throughout the night. But a former Los Angeles Fire Department incident commander said the data showed that too many firefighters were deployed like 'moths to a candle,' directed to swarm the flames immediately in front of them. 'Nobody stood back and looked at the big picture,' said the official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss another agency's operations. 'It takes leadership and situational awareness to direct that as an incident commander and say, 'Hey guys, I understand you guys are fighting fire there. I don't need you there. Based on the map, weather, rate of fire spread and 911 calls we're getting, I need you to defend homes and evacuation in this other community.'' The automatic vehicle locator data, which The Times obtained through a public records request, track L.A. County Fire Department vehicles responding to the Palisades and Eaton fires on a minute-to-minute basis. The Times used the GPS coordinates to pinpoint every time a truck stopped. Fire trucks from the roughly 20 other agencies responding to the Eaton fire, such as the U.S. Forest Service and the Pasadena Fire Department, were not captured in the data, nor were county trucks that didn't have a vehicle locator system or whose system was not working. County officials said there could also be gaps in the data caused by disruptions in cell service. The Times has requested, but not received, vehicle locator data for some of the other agencies. The data provide a possible explanation for one of county officials' key failures. Residents west of Lake Avenue did not get an evacuation order until 3:25 a.m. Jan. 8 — more than four hours after flames were first reported in the area. East Altadenans got their first evacuation order at 6:40 p.m. Jan 7. Some former fire officials said the data suggest that firefighters may not have known of the embers flying into western neighborhoods. Ferocious winds grounded a county helicopter over Eaton Canyon almost immediately, leaving no bird's-eye view. On the ground, county fire trucks were focused almost entirely east of Lake. No county fire vehicles responded to the 911 calls trickling in from west Altadena early in the night, according to the data, though it's possible other agencies did. The county has hired the consulting firm McChrystal Group to investigate what went awry with the evacuation orders. The county Sheriff's Department and the county Fire Department, which both had first responders in Altadena that night, have said they shared responsibility for ordering evacuations. A spokesperson for the Sheriff's Department did not respond to an inquiry about where deputy vehicles were that night, and the agency has not fulfilled a request for vehicle locator data. While homes near the foothills around Eaton Canyon were mostly unscathed by flames, most of west Altadena was destroyed. Thousands of structures were lost. Eighteen people died there — the vast majority on blocks where a county fire truck never stopped. One additional victim perished just east of Lake Avenue. On West Terrace Street, despite three 911 calls, no aid came for Anthony Mitchell Sr., a 68-year-old amputee, and his son, who had cerebral palsy. On Monterosa Drive, Victor Shaw, 66, died fighting the flames with a garden hose after a neighbor called 911. On Tonia Avenue, Erliene Kelley, 83, died after calling 911 twice. Her son, Trevor Kelley, tried to rescue her around 6 a.m., inching through oily black smoke too thick for his truck's high beams to penetrate. He said he understood why no firefighters attempted it. 'The only reason why I went is because of my mom and pure adrenaline, but I can see that it would be impossible for them,' said Kelley, 59, who arrived to find his mother's home burned to the ground. 'They would actually be committing suicide.' The county started the day with firefighters to spare. Marrone, responsible for fire protection across unincorporated parts of L.A. County as well as roughly 60 cities, extended the shift of firefighters about to go home the morning of Jan. 7, leaving him with 1,800 on hand. Later in the evening, he ordered 50 strike teams from the state, bringing an additional 250 vehicles into the fray. When sparks ignited near Pacific Palisades around 10:30 a.m., county fire trucks raced to help the Los Angeles Fire Department, which had been caught flat-footed after staffing a fraction of its available vehicles. In a day full of failures, the city's staffing decision, experts said, was the original sin, creating a 'domino effect' that hamstrung the county's response to fires in its own territory. 'They pretty much used up their extra people to assist L.A. city,' said Rick Crawford, a former LAFD battalion chief who reviewed The Times' vehicle locator analysis. By 6:15 p.m., according to the data, the county had sent 47 fire trucks and more than 40 other vehicles to the Palisades fire. More than one-third were in Pacific Palisades — an area the city Fire Department is responsible for. With the fire still raging across the Santa Monica Mountains, those trucks stayed put when flames erupted in Eaton Canyon at 6:18 p.m., about 40 miles away. New county fire trucks flooded the canyon area to fight what would become the most hellish blaze of the day, with hurricane-force winds scattering embers in every direction. Trucks soon moved into the eastern reaches of Altadena and small pockets of Pasadena before fanning east into Kinneloa Mesa, Sierra Madre and Pasadena's Hasting Ranch neighborhood, the data show. Firefighters said they met pure chaos on every corner — residents in wheelchairs desperate to escape nursing facilities, residents begging for their families to be saved. With lives still at risk, some county fire leaders said, it may not have made sense to divert to the west. 'We did not have enough people to shift in masses from one area of Altadena to another,' said Dave Gillotte, head of the county firefighters union. 'The story very well could be, why did fire engines leave the area where we had people still trapped?' A little after 10 p.m., some county fire trucks headed toward Sylmar after reports of a third fast-moving blaze came in from the San Fernando Valley. 'You can't just say, 'I'm not sending anybody to the Hurst fire — let it burn,''' Marrone said. Marrone said he has not conducted an analysis of fire truck locations because the state has hired the Fire Safety Research Institute to do an independent review of the overall fire response. He cautioned that the vehicle locator data show only a partial picture, because they don't include dozens of trucks from other agencies. The California Governor's Office of Emergency Services, for example, sent 68 fire trucks during the first 12 hours of the Eaton fire but did not have locator information available for them. The Pasadena Fire Department had 12 trucks at the Eaton fire that night, in addition to patrols, but couldn't say how much time they spent in Altadena, according to Chief Chad Augustin. The unified incident command was led that night by the county, along with the U.S. Forest Service, the L.A. County Sheriff's Department and several other nearby fire agencies. Marrone said that with his firefighters overwhelmed in the east, other agencies that came on scene later should have helped in west Altadena. 'I don't agree that it's L.A. County's responsibility to make sure we go into west Altadena,' he said. 'I'm not going to allow L.A. County Fire or the men and women of my department to take this on the chin as, 'Oh, the Eaton fire failure, the Eaton fire deaths, were solely the responsibility of Chief Marrone and his men and women.' No, in my mind, that can't be farther from the truth.' As firefighters battled three raging blazes across the county on Jan. 7, 911 dispatchers got the first clear sign at 10:50 p.m. that flying embers were threatening homes west of Lake Avenue. A 911 caller reported a flaming roof on East Calaveras Street. Two more calls from the street followed. By 3:25 a.m., when the first evacuation order for the area went out, 911 dispatchers had received 17 reports of fire from homes west of Lake Avenue. No county fire trucks responded to those homes, according to the data. 'Where these calls come in, they've got to assign somebody right away. 'Hey, yeah, we got reports of this fire jumping Lake Avenue. What's going on? Any engines over there?'' said a former L.A. County fire captain who reviewed The Times' analysis and requested anonymity to speak candidly about his former employer's response. 'We're taught to not grow roots, so to speak, in any one area — you've got to move.' Marrone said the addresses from the 911 calls should have all been relayed to the unified incident command. It's possible, he said, that commanders sent fire trucks from other agencies to those calls, which wouldn't have been reflected in the data. Soon, west Altadena was a hellscape. Dispatchers were fielding a deluge of 911 calls, many from residents trapped inside burning homes. 'I begged them to come. I imagine they have me on tape — I was crying when I said it. My life was going before my eyes,' said Daniel MacPherson, 70, who called 911 around 5 a.m. after the smoke grew so thick he couldn't see his hand. 'They said, 'We're busy.'' He escaped as his neighbors' home was engulfed in flames. Kim Winiecki, 77, and Evelyn McClendon, 59, didn't make it out. After the 3:25 a.m. evacuation order, some county fire trucks moved into west Altadena, but most stayed east, according to the vehicle locator data, even as the blaze worsened in the west. Between 5:30 and 6 a.m., 42 trucks made stops around the Eaton fire, but just seven of them in west Altadena. The number of fire trucks in the area gradually increased through the afternoon, the data show, though homes continued to burn throughout the day. Sylvie Andrews, 45, returned to her home around 11 a.m. after the winds had calmed — just in time to watch it go up in flames. 'It was fightable, and they were not fighting at all,' said Andrews, who said she was sympathetic to the difficulty of saving homes at the fire's peak but couldn't understand why she lost everything later in the morning. Many Altadena residents don't need data to be convinced that their homes probably burned with no fire trucks around. The marquee at a local Catholic school was vandalized to read: 'FIRE DEPARTMENT WTF.' Neighbors joke about defending their street with a 'bucket brigade.' 'Citizens with garden hoses — those are the only people who fought the fire,' said Steven Lamb, who said he spent the night pacing his street with his hose, battling flaming palm fronds and embers the size of baseballs. Lamb, a residential designer, said sheriff's deputies forced him to evacuate at 10:30 a.m. He turned on the news at 2 p.m. to see his house had burned to the ground. At 67 years old, he's now living with his wife in his childhood bedroom in his mother's home. Shawna Dawson Beer, who runs a popular Facebook group for Altadenans, described residents as in 'pitchfork mode.' 'I did not think there was any universe where it would be possible to turn a community against beloved first responders — this is it,' said Dawson Beer, 51. 'We were left to burn.'
