{"id":72372,"date":"2023-06-08T18:11:42","date_gmt":"2023-06-08T22:11:42","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.thebookbeat.com\/backroom\/?p=72372"},"modified":"2023-06-08T18:11:42","modified_gmt":"2023-06-08T22:11:42","slug":"juneteenth","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.thebookbeat.com\/backroom\/2023\/06\/08\/juneteenth\/","title":{"rendered":"Juneteenth"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Monday, June 19<\/strong> is Juneteenth! Juneteenth is a federal holiday commemorating the emancipation of enslaved African Americans. Deriving its name from combining “June” and “nineteenth,” it is celebrated on the anniversary of the order, issued by Major General Gordon Granger on June 19, 1865, proclaiming freedom for slaves in Texas. Originating in Galveston, Juneteenth has since been observed annually in various parts of the United States, often broadly celebrating African-American culture. The day was first recognized as a federal holiday in 2021, when President Joe Biden signed the Juneteenth National Independence Day Act into law after the efforts of Lula Briggs Galloway, Opal Lee, and others.<\/p>\n

For more information about Juneteenth and the history of civil rights in America, here are some Book Beat recommendations!<\/p>\n

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\"\"<\/a>On Juneteenth<\/em><\/a> by Annette Gordon-Reed<\/p>\n

Weaving together American history, dramatic family chronicle, and searing episodes of memoir, Annette Gordon-Reed\u2019s On Juneteenth provides a historian\u2019s view of the country\u2019s long road to Juneteenth, recounting both its origins in Texas and the enormous hardships that African-Americans have endured in the century since, from Reconstruction through Jim Crow and beyond. All too aware of the stories of cowboys, ranchers, and oilmen that have long dominated the lore of the Lone Star State, Gordon-Reed\u2014herself a Texas native and the descendant of enslaved people brought to Texas as early as the 1820s\u2014forges a new and profoundly truthful narrative of her home state, with implications for us all.<\/p>\n

Combining personal anecdotes with poignant facts gleaned from the annals of American history, Gordon-Reed shows how, from the earliest presence of Black people in Texas to the day in Galveston on June 19, 1865, when Major General Gordon Granger announced the end of legalized slavery in the state, African-Americans played an integral role in the Texas story.<\/p>\n

Reworking the traditional \u201cAlamo\u201d framework, she powerfully demonstrates, among other things, that the slave- and race-based economy not only defined the fractious era of Texas independence but precipitated the Mexican-American War and, indeed, the Civil War itself.<\/p>\n

In its concision, eloquence, and clear presentation of history, On Juneteenth vitally revises conventional renderings of Texas and national history. As our nation verges on recognizing June 19 as a national holiday, On Juneteenth is both an essential account and a stark reminder that the fight for equality is exigent and ongoing.<\/p>\n

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\"\"<\/a>Stayed on Freedom: The Long History of Black Power Through One Family’s Journey<\/em><\/a> by Dan Berger<\/p>\n

The Black Power movement, often associated with its iconic spokesmen, derived much of its energy from the work of people whose stories have never been told. Stayed On Freedom<\/em> brings into focus two unheralded Black Power activists who dedicated their lives to the fight for freedom.<\/p>\n

Zoharah Simmons and Michael Simmons fell in love while organizing tenants and workers in the South. Their commitment to each other and to social change took them on a decades-long journey that traversed first the country and then the world. In centering their lives, historian Dan Berger shows how Black Power united the local and the global across organizations and generations.<\/p>\n

Based on hundreds of hours of interviews, Stayed On Freedom<\/em> is a moving and intimate portrait of two people trying to make a life while working to make a better world.<\/p>\n

\u201cBeautiful, inspiring, heartbreaking, gut-wrenching, and thought-provoking\u2026Highly recommended.\u201d \u2014Library Journal (starred review)<\/p>\n

“A page turner.\u2026 a critical text to help the current generation of radicals, the Black Lives Matter activists, study lessons of lives well-lived.\u201d \u2014Facing South<\/p>\n

\u201cBoth personal and with a big-picture view\u2014a welcome contribution to the literature of the civil rights movement.\u201d \u2014Kirkus<\/p>\n

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\"\"<\/a>Half American: The Epic Story of African Americans Fighting World War II at Home and Abroad<\/em><\/a> by Matthew F. Delmont<\/p>\n

\u201cMatthew F. Delmont\u2019s book is filled with compelling narratives that outline with nuance, rigor, and complexity how Black Americans fought for this country abroad while simultaneously fighting for their rights here in the? United States. Half American<\/em> belongs firmly within the canon of indispensable World War II books.\u201d \u2014Clint Smith, #1 New York Times bestselling author of How the Word Is Passed: A Reckoning with the History of Slavery Across America<\/p>\n

Over one million Black men and women served in World War II. Black troops were at Normandy, Iwo Jima, and the Battle of the Bulge, serving in segregated units and performing unheralded but vital support jobs, only to be denied housing and educational opportunities on their return home. Without their crucial contributions to the war effort, the United States could not have won the war. And yet the stories of these Black veterans have long been ignored, cast aside in favor of the myth of the \u201cGood War\u201d fought by the \u201cGreatest Generation.\u201d<\/p>\n

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\"\"<\/a>The 1619 Project: A New Origin Story<\/em> <\/a> edited by Nikole Hannah-Jones and The New York Times Magazine<\/em><\/p>\n

In late August 1619, a ship arrived in the British colony of Virginia bearing a cargo of twenty to thirty enslaved people from Africa. Their arrival led to the barbaric and unprecedented system of American chattel slavery that would last for the next 250 years. This is sometimes referred to as the country\u2019s original sin, but it is more than that: It is the source of so much that still defines the United States.<\/p>\n

The New York Times Magazine\u2019s award-winning 1619 Project issue reframed our understanding of American history by placing slavery and its continuing legacy at the center of our national narrative. This book substantially expands on that work, weaving together eighteen essays that explore the legacy of slavery in present-day America with thirty-six poems and works of fiction that illuminate key moments of oppression, struggle, and resistance. The essays show how the inheritance of 1619 reaches into every part of contemporary American society, from politics, music, diet, traffic, and citizenship to capitalism, religion, and our democracy itself.<\/p>\n

This book that speaks directly to our current moment, contextualizing the systems of race and caste within which we operate today. It reveals long-glossed-over truths around our nation\u2019s founding and construction\u2014and the way that the legacy of slavery did not end with emancipation, but continues to shape contemporary American life.<\/p>\n

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\"\"<\/a>The Odyssey of Phillis Wheatley: A Poet’s Journeys Through American Slavery and Independence<\/em><\/a> by David Waldstreicher<\/p>\n

Admired by George Washington, ridiculed by Thomas Jefferson, published in London, and read far and wide, Phillis Wheatley led one of the most extraordinary American lives. Seized in West Africa and forced into slavery as a child, she was sold to a merchant family in Boston, where she became a noted poet at a young age. Mastering the Bible, Greek and Latin translations, and the works of Pope and Milton, she used her verse to variously lampoon, question, and assert the injustice of her enslaved condition: \u201cCan I then but pray \/ Others may never feel their tyrannic sway.\u201d By doing so, she added her voice to a vibrant, multisided conversation about race, slavery, and discontent with British rule; before and after her emancipation, her verses shook up racial etiquette and used familiar forms to create bold new meanings. Her life demonstrated that the American Revolution both strengthened and limited Black slavery. Indeed, she helped make it so.<\/p>\n

In this new biography, the historian David Waldstreicher offers the deepest account to date of Wheatley\u2019s life and works, correcting myths, reconstructing intimate friendships, and deepening our understanding of the revolutionary era. He demonstrates the continued vitality and resonance of a woman who wrote, in a founding gesture of American literature, \u201cThy Power, O Liberty, makes strong the weak \/ And (wond\u2019rous instinct) Ethiopians speak.\u201d<\/p>\n

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\"\"<\/a>King: A Life<\/em><\/a> by Jonathan Eig<\/p>\n

Vividly written and exhaustively researched, Jonathan Eig\u2019s King: A Life is the first major biography in decades of the civil rights icon Martin Luther King Jr.\u2014and the first to include recently declassified FBI files. In this revelatory new portrait of the preacher and activist who shook the world, the bestselling biographer gives us an intimate view of the courageous and often emotionally troubled human being who demanded peaceful protest for his movement but was rarely at peace with himself. King reveals a minister wrestling with his own human frailties and dark moods, a citizen hunted by his own government, and a man determined to fight for justice even if it proved to be a fight to the death. As he follows MLK from the classroom to the pulpit to the streets of Birmingham, Selma, and Memphis, Eig dramatically re-creates the journey of a man who recast American race relations and became our only modern-day founding father.<\/p>\n

In this landmark biography, Eig gives us an MLK for our times: a deep thinker, a brilliant strategist, a perplexing husband and father, and a committed radical who led one of history\u2019s greatest movements, and whose demands for racial and economic justice remain as urgent today as they were in his lifetime.<\/p>\n

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\"\"<\/a>Saying It Loud: 1966–The Year Black Power Challenged the Civil Rights Movement<\/em><\/a> by Mark Whitaker<\/p>\n

In gripping, novelistic detail, Saying It Loud tells the story of how the Black Power phenomenon began to challenge the traditional civil rights movement in the turbulent year of 1966. Saying It Loud takes you inside the dramatic events in this seminal year, from Stokely Carmichael\u2019s middle-of-the-night ouster of moderate icon John Lewis as chairman of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) to Carmichael\u2019s impassioned cry of \u201cBlack Power!\u201d during a protest march in rural Mississippi. From Julian Bond\u2019s humiliating and racist ouster from the Georgia state legislature because of his antiwar statements to Ronald Reagan\u2019s election as California governor riding a \u201cwhite backlash\u201d vote against Black Power and urban unrest. From the founding of the Black Panther Party for Self-Defense by Huey Newton and Bobby Seale in Oakland, California, to the origins of Kwanzaa, the Black Arts Movement, and the first Black studies programs. From Reverend Martin Luther King, Jr.\u2019s ill-fated campaign to take the civil rights movement north to Chicago to the wrenching ousting of the white members of SNCC.<\/p>\n

Deeply researched and widely reported, Saying It Loud offers brilliant portraits of the major characters in the yearlong drama, and provides new details and insights from key players and journalists who covered the story. It also makes a compelling case for why the lessons from 1966 still resonate in the era of Black Lives Matter and the fierce contemporary battles over voting rights, identity politics, and the teaching of Black history.<\/p>\n

\n

\"\"<\/a>Time’s Undoing<\/em><\/a> by Cheryl A. Head<\/p>\n

Birmingham, 1929: Robert Lee Harrington, a master carpenter, has just moved to Alabama to pursue a job opportunity, bringing along his pregnant wife and young daughter. Birmingham is in its heyday, known as the \u201cMagic City\u201d for its booming steel industry, and while Robert and his family find much to enjoy in the city\u2019s busy markets and vibrant night life \u2013 it\u2019s also a stronghold for the Klan. And with his beautiful, light-skinned wife and snazzy car, Robert begins to worry that he might be drawing the wrong kind of attention.<\/p>\n

2019: Meghan Mackenzie, the youngest reporter at the Detroit Free Press, has grown up hearing family lore about her great-grandfather\u2019s murder\u2014but no one knows the full story of what really happened back then, and his body was never found. Determined to find answers to her family\u2019s long-buried tragedy, and spurred by the urgency of the Black Lives Matter movement, Meghan travels to Birmingham. But as her investigation begins to uncover dark secrets that spider across both the city and time, her life may be in danger.<\/p>\n

Inspired by true events, Time\u2019s Undoing is both a passionate tale of one woman\u2019s quest for the truth behind the racially motivated trauma that has haunted her family for generations, and, as newfound friends and supporters in Birmingham rally around Meghan\u2019s search, the uplifting story of a community coming together to fight for change.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Monday, June 19 is Juneteenth! Juneteenth is a federal holiday commemorating the emancipation of enslaved African Americans. Deriving its name from combining “June” and “nineteenth,” it is celebrated on the anniversary of the order, issued by Major General Gordon Granger on June 19, 1865, proclaiming freedom for slaves in Texas. Originating in Galveston, Juneteenth has […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":72404,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-72372","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-general"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thebookbeat.com\/backroom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/72372","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thebookbeat.com\/backroom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thebookbeat.com\/backroom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thebookbeat.com\/backroom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thebookbeat.com\/backroom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=72372"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.thebookbeat.com\/backroom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/72372\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thebookbeat.com\/backroom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/72404"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thebookbeat.com\/backroom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=72372"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thebookbeat.com\/backroom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=72372"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thebookbeat.com\/backroom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=72372"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}