Virtual Space v Racist Space
<p>Iam sorry but I knew — past tense — very little about the reason behind the Juneteenth celebrations for 3 days in America. It has increasingly been recognized officially by state governments in recent years, and President Biden signed a bill in 2021 establishing <strong>Juneteenth National Independence Day</strong> as a federal holiday.</p>
<p>Juneteenth is a holiday that marks June 19, 1865, when Union Gen. Gordon Granger arrived in Galveston, Texas, about two months after Confederate Gen. Robert E. Lee surrendered at Appomattox, Virginia, to inform enslaved Black people that the Civil War had ended and they were now free. General Granger’s announcement put into effect the <strong>Emancipation Proclamation</strong>, which had been issued more than two-and-a-half years earlier by President Abraham Lincoln.</p>
<p>When the revelers in Florida Alabama walk through their city center they will <em>still</em> pass by a 20-foot-tall Confederate monument in marble that was dedicated in 1903 and dominates the public square. It is more than just a stone statue for it is both a symbolic and a real refusal to accept the Emancipation Proclamation and a rallying point for white supremacists today and tomorrow still living as if the Civil War were a Confederate victory. Such Confederate monuments are symbols of unrelenting hatred for black people.</p>
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