Even the very Emancipation Proclamation signed by President Abraham Lincoln, January 1, 1863 had little meaning to many Blacks who were omitted from the order and left in bondage in the very states fighting on the side of the Union to supposedly free them, as only those in the slave holding states—states fighting against the nation—were freed by Lincoln’s order.

This news of liberation came two years after the signing of the Emancipation Proclamation and six months after Congress passed the 13th Amendment, another example of how, once again, the nation failed to make the freedom of Black people a priority as evidenced by the two and a half year delay in notifying them they were free.

Today, as we celebrate the freedom of slaves in Galveston, Texas 155 years hence, America is at a crossroads and many Black Americans are asking whether they are totally free today?

Black men have turned up dead, their bodies dangling mysteriously from trees in public places and officials have been quick to call their deaths’ suicides—that is until members of the community are rising-up and asking for full and complete are dying from COVID-19 in unconscionable numbers in a nation with unlimited resources, not because of underlying morbidity (though it makes them more vulnerable), but as a direct result of institutional and systemic racism that has prevailed in this country since slavery, through the Emancipation Proclamation, through the 13th Amendment, through passage of the Voting Rights Act, through the implementation of Affirmative Action, even beyond the election and two terms of the nation’s first Black president and on to today.

Certainly, there has been progress for some segment of the Black community, but not enough and far too many Blacks in this nation continue to strive in hopes of a better day—the promise they celebrate each Juneteenth.

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Dr Graham Serjeant was empathetic and compassionate

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