Juneteenth, Pride, and the Interwoven Struggle for Liberation

I have a colleague from Texas; the silhouette of the state tattooed on her ankle serves as a reminder, lest I forget. She loves the people of Texas and often talks about the complex relationship she has with a state that both feeds her soul and hurts it.

As a born and raised New Yorker, for kicks I try to imagine just how hot it gets way down in Galveston, TX. In case you’re wondering, my weather app says it’s a balmy 88 degrees, with 28% humidity. (My colleague says that’s perfect, and I agree to disagree!) 

Today is Juneteenth. I can’t help but wonder what the temperature felt like in June of 1865. The war was over, the Confederate surrendered, and yet for more than 250,000 Black people in the state, nothing had changed. Upheld by law, fueled by hate, sustained by fear, driven by greed, and protected by a system designed to profit from their oppression, Black people’s freedom was still denied. 

On June 19, 1865, Union troops arrived in Galveston and read these orders out loud: “All slaves are free.” Two years after President Lincoln had signed the Emancipation Proclamation. 

The signing of this document has been lauded in our history books as an act of brave altruism by Lincoln, and it’s also true that this was a pragmatic, strategic move to get more soldiers to fight in the war. In the complexity of this truth, we must remember that freedom didn’t come with the stroke of a pen—it came with a war, with blood, with resistance. 

It came late. And only when it was forced. But still—it came.

Juneteenth marks that moment when freedom crashed through delay and denial. And that moment must matter to all of us. What began as liberation from racial subjugation planted the legal and moral seeds for so many other freedoms still being fought for today.

Before Juneteenth, before Lincoln’s proclamation, before the war that tore the country open, there was Dred Scott, a man who sued for his freedom in 1846. Dred Scott was born into slavery, into a country that refused to see his full humanity. And yet he believed in something more. He believed that living on free soil should mean something. He believed that the courts, the very institutions designed to uphold a system that denied his freedom, could somehow deliver justice.

That belief—staggering in its bravery—is worth sitting with. Because it didn’t come from naivety. It came from resolve. From an unshakable belief in his own worth, despite the onslaught of a legal and cultural system built to erase it.

In the face of laws, courts, and a culture that insisted he had “no rights which the white man was bound to respect,” Dred Scott persisted. He filed that case, and he still fought—not just for himself, but for his wife, Harriet, and their daughters. He planted a flag in history that would ripple forward to the 13th and 14th Amendments.

Now it didn’t go his way at that moment. But, he is part of a long lineage of people—Black, Brown, Indigenous, queer, trans—who have demanded more from a nation that had written them out of its founding promises.

We remember Dred Scott not because he was granted justice, but because he insisted on it. And when we insist, too, we carry his legacy.

In 1857, the Supreme Court responded with a brutal ruling that said Black people could never be citizens, that they had no rights the law was bound to respect.

And once again, it’s easy to think of that moment as defeat. But Dred Scott’s case ignited fury. It revealed the rot. It forced a nation to confront itself, acting as one of the most significant events that led to the Civil War - a brutal, four-year conflict from 1861 to 1865 that ultimately ended in the abolition of slavery and opening a chapter of Reconstruction. 

So on this day, during this month of Pride, let’s recognize the connections. When freedom finally came, it didn’t just end at Juneteenth—it came with a commitment to reconstruct our democracy, which led to the 13th Amendment, abolishing slavery, and the 14th Amendment, which promised citizenship, equal protection, and the radical idea that we all belong.

These amendments were born from Black struggle— struggles that stand today as the legal backbone of EVERYONE’S freedom.

A century after Dred Scott, this is the very resistance that made it possible for queer people to stand up and say: we, too, deserve love. We, too, deserve protection. We, too, belong here.

It was Black folks who made room for the rest of us: for women to vote, for interracial couples to marry, for trans kids to demand dignity. This is why the courts, in 2015, were able to say that two men or two women in love could be legally wed. This is why we even have the legal language to demand equal rights—because Black people demanded freedom first.

And that is why Juneteenth matters. It’s not a relic of Black history—it’s a cornerstone of American liberation. A freedom story that echoes through every movement that came after.

So when we talk about freedom, about liberation, we cannot - and must never - separate these stories.

When Marsha P. Johnson and Sylvia Rivera threw bricks and refused to back down at Stonewall in 1969, they were not acting in a vacuum. They were part of a lineage—a long, braided line of resistance. Two trans women of color, whose families carry the legacy of slavery and systemic racial oppression, rising up in a country that had always told them they didn’t belong.

They stood not just for queer rights, but for the right to exist fully, freely, and safely in their racialized bodies.

Their fight was made possible—legally, morally, spiritually—by those who came before them. Their courage lit the way for those who would follow. And their message still elevates today: we do not back down, and we do not leave each other behind.

Today, in 2025, we see that same courage being called upon again. Trans youth are under attack. Black and Indigenous communities are navigating the ongoing legacy of colonization, policing, and systemic erasure. DEI efforts are being stripped from schools and workplaces. The truth about our country’s history—about slavery, about resistance, about the laws born from it—is forever being rewritten or erased.

And yet—we are still here. 

Because every gain we’ve ever made has been hard-won. And every move towards justice has been built by people brave enough to speak the truth, live authentically, and risk going against the systems never designed for them to thrive. 

We owe our very rights to the struggle that Juneteenth represents. Today and always, let’s not forget that. Freedom and liberation are not things we inherit—we build them together. Let’s not separate our stories.