On Juneteenth – with Annette Gordon-Reed

On Monday, June 20, at 6pm, you are invited to the SJE Guild Room to hear the story of Juneteenth. We will be “zooming” into a presentation from American Ancestors and then have some conversation hosted by Justice & Outreach Commission Chair Nancy Collins. You’re invited to bring a snack or drink to share. 

For Annette Gordon-Reed, a Pulitzer and National Book Award-winning historian, also a proud Texas native and descendant of Texas slaves, the story of Juneteenth has special resonance. On Juneteenth presents the saga of a frontier defined as much by the slave plantation owner as the mythic cowboy, rancher, or oilman. Celebrated for her research and revelations in her prize-winning book The Hemingses of Monticello, Annette Gordon-Reed now tells a tale closer to home. The Texas native combines her own scholarship with a personal and intimate reflection of an overlooked holiday that has suddenly taken on new significance. 

In On Juneteenth she writes, “it is staggering that there is no date commemorating the end of slavery in the United States.” Yet Texas, the last state to free its slaves, has long acknowledged the date of June 19, 1865, when US Major General Gordon Granger proclaimed from his Galveston headquarters that slavery was no longer the law of the land. Don’t miss Gordon-Reed’s discussion with Lisa Baldez about her research process, her childhood in Texas, and the circuitous path to national recognition of the Juneteenth holiday.