They said we were free. They said June 19, 1865, was the day we finally heard it out loud—that we were no longer property, no longer counted like cattle or taxed like tobacco. Two years late, but freedom, they said. They say.
But what they don’t say—what’s often left in the silence between fireworks and food trucks—is that Juneteenth wasn’t just a date on the calendar. It was a memory passed like tongs over hot coals, shared in backyards, in neighborhoods carved from red lines and resilience. It was a whisper of freedom held between ribs and potato salad before there was ever a hashtag or a plastic cup with red, black, and green printed on the side, “Made in China.”
Before it was named a federal holiday, Juneteenth was ours. Foundational Black Americans. The descendants of those who labored resisted and died without so much as a headstone to mark their names. It was celebrated not with grandeur but with soul. Small parades down streets we paved but never owned. Sunday choirs echoing freedom songs older than the Constitution. Fathers firing up grills, uncles telling stories that turned mythic over time, and grandmothers seasoning more than just food—seasoning identity, memory, grief, and joy into every bite.
We didn’t need permission to celebrate. We needed remembrance.
But now? Now, the world has discovered Juneteenth like a new flavor of soda—for a limited time only, available at your nearest big-box retailer. There’s a profit in our pain. A market for our memory. You can buy a Juneteenth T-shirt from the same store that called the cops on us last month. You can eat a “Freedom Day Cupcake” sold by hands that never once lifted a tray at a family reunion.
Even in celebration, they find a way to own it.
Federal recognition was supposed to be acknowledgment. But somewhere in the process, it started to feel like appropriation. As soon as it was made official, they also made it theirs—to monetize, to control, to parade around with branding guides and Instagram filters.
They charge us for permits on our own blocks. They raise vendor fees at parks we once filled for free. They line the streets with booths and banners but ask none of the elders to speak. No stories. No truth. Just commerce.
What once felt sacred now feels staged.
And so I offer this:
Celebrate quietly. Celebrate deeply. Celebrate honestly.
Not with mall sales and glittered slogans, but with memory. With reverence. With fire and flesh and laughter and smoke curling upward like a prayer.
Light a grill in your backyard. Share a story with your child. Tell them about the General who rode into Galveston with two years of truth in his mouth. Tell them about the cotton and the blood. About the chains. About how some of us never made it to June 19 but dreamed of it in our final breath.
Gather your family close—not for spectacle, but for sanctuary.
Reclaim the sound of laughter in the yard. The creak of old lawn chairs. The gospel hum of freedom echoing off brick walls. Let the smell of ribs and spice be our resistance. Let the rhythm of our joy be the sermon.
Because Juneteenth isn’t for sale.
It never was.
And if they ask where the parade is, tell them it’s right here—
in the circle of Family and friends , under the tree, where freedom still sings low and slow.
By Kyle Hayes
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