06/19/2026
IT’S JUNETEENTH! Let’s talk about slavery, freedom, and history.
Kali Speaks
On this day in 1865, federal troops notified slaves in Galveston, Texas that the Emancipation Proclamation, written two years prior, made slavery illegal in states that had seceded from the U.S. That may seem like it is written in an I-gotta-hit-this-word-count format, but I write it this way because that’s exactly what the Emancipation Proclamation did.
At the end of the Civil War, slavery remained legal in states such as Kentucky that stayed with the Union. In fact, the Emancipation Proclamation was written with our state in mind. Abraham Lincoln did not want to lose Kentucky to the Confederacy, made up of states that were clear they were seceding to preserve the institution of chattel slavery that their economies and societies depended on, so the Emancipation Proclamation only applied to states that had left the Union. So, on June 19, 1865, there had been no federal troops riding into Daviess County to tell our ancestors they were free—because they weren’t. Kentucky slaves just had to take one for the team, I guess, for the sake of the Union:
“My paramount object in this struggle is to save the Union, and is not either to save or to destroy slavery. If I could save the Union without freeing any slave I would do it, and if I could save it by freeing all the slaves I would do it; and if I could save it by freeing some and leaving others alone I would also do that.
– Abraham Lincoln, August 22, 1862 Letter to Horace Greeley
It would not be until that following December, when the 13th Amendment was ratified, that slavery would be illegal nationwide, except as punishment for a crime. Despite that slavery had been waning as a practice in Kentucky already, this state did not vote to ratify the 13th and would not symbolically ratify it until the 1970’s.
Quiet as it's kept, Black folks were escaping plantations where they’d been kept isolated and unaware of the Proclamation, the War, and the 13th as late as the 1960's. While people watched Black Americans march for political power and the ability to affect their futures (a purpose we often flatten to ‘the right to vote’), others lived under the full brutality of American slavery as though it were the 1600's.
Just this week, ICE responded favorably to private prison giant Geo Group’s request for changes in national detention standards. Previously, detainees were at least required to be given what would be known today as slave wages ($1 a day) for their labor. Now, they “are not entitled to wages or benefits under applicable wage laws or labor regulations," at all.
You see, the story of slavery and freedom in the United States is not simple, linear, or even over. Some of the victors have rewritten themselves into heroes at the expense of the truth, and it is under this self-serving, essentialist simplification of history that slavery has been allowed to persist, that true freedom has been delayed. Because, as Dr. Maya Angelou said, "The truth is, no one of us can be free until everybody is free."
We celebrate Juneteenth and emancipation with gratitude for our ancestors that never stopped fighting for their freedom, that had been liberating themselves from bo***ge for centuries, but also as a jubilant reminder that we are cut out for that very fight and must continue it until we have won. We’ve come a long way, but we have so much further to go. And we can only get there together.
Have a blessed Juneteenth, y'all. See y'all at Juneteenth on the Ohio River tomorrow!
