How to Teach Children about Juneteenth
Juneteenth is almost here! So I’ve been thinking about how to teach children about Juneteenth, an important holiday in the United States.
Juneteenth is the oldest known celebration commemorating the ending of slavery in the United States. Dating back to 1865, it was on June 19th that the Union soldiers, led by Major General Gordon Granger, landed at Galveston, Texas with news that the war had ended and that the enslaved were now free. Note that this was two and a half years after President Lincoln’s Emancipation Proclamation – which had become official January 1, 1863.
Black on Black
Resources for How to Teach Children about Juneteenth
Here are the resources I’ll be using with my own kids (9 and almost 7 years-old):
- Teaching Tolerance: includes a nuanced overview of the history (good for the adult to ground themselves in the history)
- Video from Inside Edition (all ages)
- Video from Reckon (all ages)
- A read aloud of the book Juneteenth for Mazie (all ages)
In 1852, the abolitionist Frederick Douglass said, “What, to the American slave, is your 4th of July? I answer; a day that reveals to him, more than all other days in the year, the gross injustice and cruelty to which he is the constant victim. To him, your celebration is a sham; your boasted liberty, an unholy license; your national greatness, swelling vanity.”
When I have these conversations with my white children, I’m trying to accomplish several different things. First, I want them to understand how injustice in the past has led to injustice in the present. Second, I want them to feel a moral obligation to understand injustice and actively work to dismantle it. Finally, I want them to feel immense appreciation for other people. I don’t want them to feel pity for Black people; I want them to be in awe of their ancestral strength and perseverance and to be so grateful that the world is filled with people who are similar to them in some ways and different in other ways.