It’s a strange thing to commemorate Juneteenth. It’s an odd but necessary holiday — we are celebrating a day when slaves in Texas got the news in 1865 that they were finally free, two years after the emancipation proclamation. Think about that, that the news had been kept from them all that time, these people had been working as slaves for masters who intentionally kept that fact from them. And then, of course, those people and their descendants aren’t even fully liberated yet. This holiday is literally the very least we can do, and even at that, it has been opposed by conservatives.

Our writers here at Freethoughtblogs have written a few things about our history of slavery.

• Racism and the KKK: What I’ve Learned from My Family’s Dark Past

• Slavery in Canada

• Opening Thoughts – Juneteenth—Another Thought – Juneteenth—Last Post Art – Juneteenth

• Juneteenth: Boosting Black Voices

• (Video) Jews and Slavery: A Complicated Legacy (Non-Fiction)

• Danish slavery

• Juneteenth resources

• It’s what science was

What you really ought to do, especially if you’re white like us, is read black writers, like Michael Harriot’s article on Make Juneteenth Great Again: The Caucasians’ Guide to Celebrating Juneteenth. Or just exercise a little humility. Or fight for civil rights.