Freedom Days: Juxtaposing Juneteenth & Independence Day
(Reprinted from NE Synod Antiracism Collaborative Newsletter, June 2026 issue )
It is absolutely clear that God has called you to a free life. Just make sure that you don’t use this freedom as an excuse to do whatever you want to do and destroy your freedom. Rather, use your freedom to serve one another in love; that’s how freedom grows. For everything we know about God’s Word is summed up in a single sentence: Love others as you love yourself. That’s an act of true freedom. If you bite and ravage each other, watch out—in no time at all you will be annihilating each other, and where will your precious freedom be then? Galatians 5:13-15, The Message
Both Juneteenth (June 19) and the Fourth of July are celebrated as Freedom Days. Juneteenth commemorates the date in 1865 when enslaved African Americans in Texas were emancipated, more than two years after President Lincoln delivered the Emancipation Proclamation. July 4th commemorates the date in 1776 when the Declaration of Independence was adopted by thirteen American colonies, declaring themselves free and independent from British rule.
Both events are federally-recognized national holidays. Yet, it is striking that each promised freedom for some, but not freedom for all. Who will celebrate Juneteenth Day? Who will celebrate the Fourth of July?
The Declaration of Independence was written for white male landowners. It excluded enslaved persons and it paved the way for westward occupation of native lands. In a July 5,1852 keynote address to the Rochester, NY Ladies’ Anti-Slavery Society, abolitionist Frederick Douglass said, "I am not included within the pale of this glorious anniversary! Your high independence only reveals the immeasurable distance between us. The blessings in which you, this day, rejoice, are not enjoyed in common. The rich inheritance of justice, liberty, prosperity and independence, bequeathed by your fathers, is shared by you, not by me. The sunlight that brought life and healing to you, has brought stripes and death to me. This Fourth of July is yours, not mine."
Although this speech was delivered a decade before the Civil War, the United States—even now—has not fully embraced for all the “rich inheritance of justice, liberty, prosperity, and independence” of which Douglass spoke. While Juneteenth has come to represent freedom from slavery, attaining freedom is an ongoing struggle. After ratification in 1865 of the Thirteenth Amendment (Abolition of Slavery) new forms of oppression took hold. The Thirteenth Amendment permits slavery “as a punishment for crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted” and this feeds into the present-day profit-driven mass incarceration system. Other systemic barriers—sharecropping, Jim Crow, lynchings, segregation, exclusion from WWII veteran (GI) benefits, and red-lining—were put in place to stop the rich inheritance that Douglass spoke of from being “enjoyed in common.”
Freedom and the liberty to pursue life has been denied repeatedly throughout the history of the United States. How do American descendants of Mexican, Chinese, Hawai’ian, Japanese, and all nationalities view Freedom Day and Fourth of July celebrations? Mexican Americans who lost their lands to Anglo American squatters? Chinese immigrants who built the transcontinental railroad and were viewed as sub-standard cheap labor? The 1893 US overthrow and annexation of the Hawaiian Kingdom? The incarceration of Japanese American citizens during WWII?
A Call to Action: Toni Morrison said, “The function of freedom is to free someone else.” The Apostle Paul said to “Use your freedom to serve one another in love.” Let this guide our Freedom Day celebrations.
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