Editorial: Juneteenth -- A day to celebrate freedom

Baltimore Sun Editorial Board, The Baltimore Sun on Jun 20, 2025

Published in Op Eds

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June 19, 1865.

On that date, Union troops freed a quarter-million African American slaves in Texas. It was the last state to recognize President Abraham Lincoln’s Emancipation Proclamation issued on Jan. 1, 1863.

Juneteenth remained obscure in most of the country throughout the ugly decades of Jim Crow and white supremacy. Since the Civil Rights Movement, however, Juneteenth has been generally recognized as the nation’s second independence day. It became an official federal holiday in 2021 and an official state holiday in Maryland one year later.

We have witnessed 160 anniversaries since the first Juneteenth. In that interval, we have witnessed great leaps of progress for Black Americans: the election of a Black president of the United States, the appointments of Black justices to the United States Supreme Court, the rise of Baltimore-born Black billionaire Reginald Lewis, Martin Luther King Jr.’s birthday honored as a national holiday, and multiple Black governors and mayors including our own Gov. Wes Moore and Baltimore Mayor Brandon Scott.

From its birth, the glory of the United States has been liberty, the opportunity to march to your own drummer free from domestic predation or foreign aggression — the opportunity to develop your faculties and reach for your dreams. President Abraham Lincoln’s Gettysburg Address celebrated a nation “conceived in liberty.” He elaborated in his July 4, 1861, address to Congress after South Carolina’s firing on Fort Sumter: “On the side of the Union, it is a struggle for maintaining in the world, that form and substance of government, whose leading object is, to elevate the condition of men — to lift artificial weights from all shoulders; to clear the paths of laudable pursuit for all; to afford all, an unfettered start, and a fair chance, in the race of life.”

Baltimore, so near the Mason-Dixon Line, stands at the crossroads of the historic moment we recognize on Juneteenth. In the 19th century, it was one of those U.S. cities where former slaves and their children and grandchildren traveled from the South in search of greater opportunities.

Much has changed in the years since the Civil War and the end of slavery, as Black Americans, like those who migrated to Maryland seeking opportunity, have reaped the benefits of liberty promised by this country and staked out their rights.

None would deny that there remain tasks still ahead and room for more positive change in the form of economic inequality and other challenges. The world eludes perfection. Our parents and conditions at birth are fortuitously divorced from individual merit.

But the United States offers the optimal opportunity for closing the gap between merit and success. Juneteenth and President Lincoln should inspire us to continue to narrow the gap to invisibility.

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