Stop Playing Patriotic—Juneteenth Is a Funeral with Lies in Its Mouth
They said we were free. We were still bleeding. This isn’t celebration—it’s confrontation. It's grief and the spiritual truth behind America’s late-ass liberation lie.
A little back history, Juneteenth marks June 19, 1865, when Union troops arrived in Galveston, Texas, to enforce the freedom of enslaved Black people—more than two years after emancipation was declared. It reveals how long truth can be withheld and how deeply injustice was protected. Juneteenth is both a celebration of survival and a confrontation with the unfinished fight for real freedom.
Sacred Fire, Stolen Time: What Juneteenth Really Means to Me
Juneteenth is not just a holiday to me—it’s a spiritual confrontation. It’s Hoodoo in motion. It’s conjure carved into blood, delay, and silence stretched across generations. When I speak the word Juneteenth, I’m not naming a date—I’m summoning a reckoning. I’m calling out the names of the ones in my bloodline who died before the freedom they were owed ever reached their ears. I’m calling the ones who were told last. The ones who were still being worked, whipped, and broken even after the law changed—because power never rushed to deliver the truth to Black bodies like mine.
This ain’t about red velvet ice cream or a Juneteenth sale at Walmart. This is emotional altar work. This is a angered indignation in my mouth and grief in my blood, passed down in the marrow. Juneteenth sits at the intersection of gospel and grit, of protest and prophecy, of blood memory and unfinished justice. It is the flame I carry for my ancestors. It is the altar where I hold America accountable. It is the broken-backed truth they tried to bury in schoolbooks and soften with slogans: you can be legally free and still spiritually chained. I’m old enough the remember the truth. And if you don’t see how that’s still happening right now—you’re not paying attention.
But are we really free? We were declared property in the founding documents, and that declaration has never been fully undone. The Constitution and the Declaration of Independence still hold language that protected enslavement, prioritized white land-owning men, and never once named us as fully human. Until those founding words are rewritten—not just symbolically but legally—we are not free; we are simply functioning within a system that rebranded the chains.
Just when this country needs Juneteenth most, I’m watching cities scale back celebrations. I’m watching corporate sponsors vanish. Museums are rewriting pages. DEI has become a curse word in political mouths. And the same government that signed Juneteenth into law now guts the very protections that gave that law weight. I see what’s happening. It’s not coincidence—it’s strategy. From stripped DEI efforts to executive orders whitewashing Black legacy, we are living through what I call The Great Blackout. They are erasing us again. But I’ve seen this before. And my spirit don’t flinch.
So when folks ask, “Are Black people for or against Juneteenth?”—I say this: We’re not a monolith. Some of us treat Juneteenth as sacred commemoration. I do. I gather. I name the dead. I light my candles. I build my altars. I speak to my bloodline and remind my children what was stolen and what must never be forgotten. For me, Juneteenth is not a day off—it’s ancestral remembrance dressed in red.
Others in my community are suspicious—and they have every right to be. They see how companies perform support but fire us behind the scenes. They see how this holiday became a distraction after George Floyd, how it comes with no reparations, no justice, no repair. They know this celebration is built on centuries of delay. And our youth? They’re just now learning what Juneteenth means—because the system designed it that way.
But I know this much: Juneteenth is a mirror. It shows me where we’ve been, where we were dragged, and how far we still got to walk. Whether I’m lighting a candle or calling out the lies, whether I’m barbecuing or boycotting—the very fact that I’m still here deciding for myself what this day means proves the point. I define my own damn freedom.
In cities like Milwaukee, where 50,000 of us gather for the 54th year, I see us reclaiming what was never given. I know we decide what this day means—not the state, not the sponsors, and sure as hell not the silence. I don’t honor Juneteenth with blind patriotism—I honor it with fire in my mouth and rootwork in my hands. I do what my people have always done: I keep the flame lit when the world tries to blow it out.
To me, Juneteenth was never just about emancipation. It’s about accountability. It’s a demand that what was declared in word be delivered in truth. It’s the ritual of breaking the delay. It’s me refusing to let my people’s freedom be reduced to performance and pageantry. Juneteenth is the divine dominion I inherit from those who never stopped pushing. It’s law. It’s flame. It’s spirit.
So let the country choke on its confusion. Let corporations run from the word Black. Let the systems erase, retreat, rebrand—I won’t. I never have. I never will.
Because I come from the ones who made light out of nothing.
I carry the altar.
I keep the flame.
I am the bone memory.
And Juneteenth?
It’s mine.
This is the root.
This is the bone.
This is the flame that remembers.
Don’t just celebrate Juneteenth. Work it. Build an altar. Speak their names. Light that damn candle and make your mouth law.
The Flame I Never Inherited—But Still Keep Lit
My cousin Nailah used to sit on the porch with her grandmother every Juneteenth. There were no barbecues. No music. No fireworks or flags. Just silence, heat, and a single strip of red cloth pinned to her grandmother’s chest.
Nailah told me her grandmother didn’t “celebrate” Juneteenth the way most people do now. She observed it like a sacred moment—like a funeral for all the freedom that arrived too late. It wasn’t festive. It was heavy. Intentional. Rooted in memory and mourning.
I never met my grandmothers. I didn’t grow up around them. I never heard their stories firsthand or felt their hands in my hair. The porch Nailah sat on? I’ve only heard about it. The wisdom passed down to her? I had to find it elsewhere—in books, in bones, in dreams.
But Nailah remembered.
She told me her grandmother would sit still on that day, staring off across the yard like she was looking through time. At some point during the afternoon, she’d say the same thing every year:
“This is for the ones who didn’t know they was free—until the cotton bruised their hands one last time.”
Then she would spit straight into the dirt. Nailah said the air would change after that. The wind would rise without moving the trees, and the porch boards would creak like something beneath them had stirred.
Her grandmother believed that Galveston didn’t get the word in 1863 because white folks didn’t want to lose their labor. She said the real tragedy wasn’t just the delay—it was the silence. The way freedom was whispered, not shouted. Hidden. Postponed. And she always said the same thing: “There’s a difference between being freed and being released.”
When Nailah told me those stories, something inside me lit. I didn’t have the memories she had. But I had the need to remember. I had the duty to carry something forward.
So now, every Juneteenth, I make my own observance. I light a candle instead of fireworks. I write down the names I know on brown paper, and for the ones I never got to meet, I write “Still Waiting.” I leave a slice of red velvet cake at the edge of the woods—not as a celebration, but as an offering. It’s for the ones who never got to leave the fields. For the ones who never got a name in the records. For the ones who still speak through the dirt.
Nailah’s memory became my inheritance. Her grandmother’s voice became my reckoning.
Even though I never met my own grandmothers, I carry them. I carry them through the ritual. Through the flame. Through every act of remembrance that I choose on purpose.
Because Juneteenth is not just a holiday. It is a reckoning.
It is a ritual.
It is a flame passed from hand to hand—even when the hands never touched.
And I will keep it lit.
They gave us a holiday. I made it a ritual. This isn’t about celebration—it’s about reclamation, confrontation, and setting the record—and the altar—on fire.
They told me Juneteenth was the day slavery ended, but I know better.
They said my people were freed in 1863, like freedom shows up just because paper says so.
But paper never picked cotton. Paper never took a whip. Paper don’t bleed.
I know the truth: Juneteenth is not about freedom arriving. It’s about how long it was withheld. It’s not emancipation—it’s exposure. It reveals the distance between law and justice, between proclamation and protection. It reminds me that while freedom was declared, nobody rushed to deliver it to Black bodies that were still being worked, beaten, and bought like cattle. The law changed, but the power never moved.
People tell me Juneteenth is about joy. And yes, there is joy. But I know better than to believe that’s the whole story. For me, Juneteenth is about grief that learned to cook, clean, and keep going. It’s about mourning dressed in red dresses and fried fish. It’s about crying while the children play. It’s about how we’ve always known how to mourn and celebrate at the same time—and we don’t need permission to do either. That’s not contradiction. That’s conjure.
So when I honor Juneteenth, I don’t do it for the optics. I don’t do it because the country finally caught up. I do it because I know what it cost. I light a black candle for the ones who never got the word. I dress it with graveyard dirt if I have it, or soil from my yard if I don’t. I pour out whiskey for the unnamed ones, the ones whose names never touched paper, but whose blood still runs through mine. I say their names when I know them, and I say, “I see you” when I don’t.
Because I know this much: freedom is not given. It’s claimed. It’s conjured. It’s defended. I don’t wait for systems to do what I can do with my own fire and will. I don’t wait for justice to be handed to me—I work it. I speak it. I pull it down with every ritual, every flame, every Psalm, and every word spoken with authority.
In Hoodoo, we do not walk around the fire.
We walk through it.
And I’ve walked through enough flames to know—I am the fire now.
Juneteenth is not just a celebration. It’s a burn. A reminder. A confrontation.
I burn it with purpose.
Or I don’t touch it at all.
And this year, like every year—I’m lighting it up in their name.
I don’t honor Juneteenth because it’s trending. I honor it because my spirit refuses to forget what my blood remembers. I may not have grown up with stories passed from my grandmothers’ mouths, but I carry the echo of their silence. I honor Juneteenth because I know what delay feels like—in history, in healing, in the world’s refusal to say our names until it's convenient.
This isn’t a holiday I observe.
It’s a battlefield I walk barefoot.
And every year, I return to the altar—candles lit, names spoken, truth uncovered—not to celebrate what was finally given, but to reclaim what was stolen, what was hidden, and what still has not been paid in full.
Juneteenth isn’t about closure.
It’s about confrontation.
And I confront it with fire in my hands, grief in my gut, and power in my words.
Because I’m not waiting to be free.
I’m already walking in it.
And I do it for the ones who never got the chance.
This is the root.
This is the bone.
This is the flame I will never let go out.
Juneteenth is mine.
And I mean that with my whole soul.
If this lit something in you—don’t scroll past it. Share it. Speak it. Burn a candle for the ones who never got the word. Do more than celebrate. Remember and Conjure.