It is never too late to learn something new. So it is with the holiday Juneteenth.

Most of our readers likely have little or no knowledge of this holiday, although it has been celebrated in some states for 40 years and is a celebration of an event from 1865. Texas was part of the Confederacy during the Civil War. Slavery in the United States was officially declared over on Jan. 1, 1863, but until June 19, 1865, the 250,000 slaves in Texas were either not made aware or their owners had still refused to release them.

Some just had nowhere to go and remained with their previous masters. But on June 19, 1865, a special entourage arrived in Galveston to formally announce that the Civil War was over and the former slaves were indeed free men.

This day of emancipation came nearly two and a half years after the Emancipation Proclamation was signed, and there may have been a variety of reasons for the delay, such as no form of mass communication or the stubbornness of the owners to accept the proclamation that gave slaves their freedom.

While celebrated in a number of states from the end of the war, it was Texas that first declared it an actual holiday in 1980.

It has been called Freedom Day, Cel-Liberation Day and now, most commonly, Juneteenth. It wasn’t surprising last week that President Donald Trump and his administration were unaware that June 19 was a holiday, and that it would take on even more meaning this year.

It isn’t even well recognized throughout African-American communities. But as the year of COVID-19 reaches mid-year, the pandemic is having to share headlines with the civil unrest caused by a spike of another issue. Another black man was shot and killed in Atlanta this weekend. The shooting occurred after a skirmish that started because the man had fallen asleep or possibly passed out from drinking in the drive-through lane of a fast-food restaurant.

He resisted arrest after failing a sobriety test, out-wrestled two police officers and took the stun gun they were attempting to subdue him with. What seemed pretty routine ended with three shots into the victim. Should he have resisted? Maybe not, but we also don’t know what may have been said to him that caused him to suddenly stop cooperating with the arresting officers. Were the officers well trained and prepared to subdue a man when there were two officers and one suspect involved? Did a sleeping man in a drive–through really need to end in death?

Will there be more marches and possibly riots? Will the fast action of the police chief to resign and for the city to fire the officer who shot the victim be enough to keep the summer of civil protest from escalating?

This has truly become a crisis and it is becoming more clear that while Juneteenth is upon us and we are to be “recognizing the end of slavery and celebrating the culture and achievements of African-Americans,” instead black men are still living in fear of hostile white men who give them far less trust and respect than they would a man with the same skin color as their own. It’s 155 years later and the same fear that African- Americans felt when their white owners pulled the whip to control them still is experienced in communities and cities across this land. How much longer before we quit seeing skin color and see people instead?

Make Juneteenth a real holiday starting this year and change your heart and mind about racism.