By

Ed Kilgore,

political columnist for Intelligencer since 2015

Detail from a photograph of celebrations in Richmond, Virginia, ca. 1905

Juneteenth, the celebration of the good news in 1865 that the great abomination of slavery had ended, is a contradictory holiday. It’s joyful in that it commemorates the emancipation of millions of Americans from subhuman legal status. It is sorrowful in that its promise of full citizenship for Black people took so long to realize and still faces so many challenges.