Celebrating Juneteenth
Juneteenth is a hybrid of the words June and nineteenth. June 19th marks the emancipation from slavery in the U.S, dating back to 1865 when Major General Gordon Granger announced the end of the Civil War and the emancipation from slavery. This was two years after the Emancipation Proclamation was signed.
General Orders, No. 3. U.S. House, 54th Congress, 1st Session (H. Doc. 369, Part 2). “General Order Number 3,” 1896. U.S. Documents Collection. Y 1.1/2: SERIAL 3437
The U.S. National Archives holds the original 1865 handwritten order that informed those in Texas that all enslaved people that they were free. The archive is now in the process of digitizing the order and making it available in the National Archives Catalog.
- the Dusable Museum of African American HistoryIn honor of Juneteenth, (June 19, 1865), the day more than 200,000 enslaved African Americans in Confederate states were declared free, The DuSable Black History Museum and Education Center will present a day-long Juneteenth Celebration on Monday, June 19, 2023, from 10:00 AM until 8:00 PM.
Curriculum Books (Children's/YA)
Celebrate fiction and nonfiction by African American authors that continue to shape our culture, celebrate liberation, and acknowledge the ongoing work towards freedom and equality, still necessary over 150 years later.
The Vanishing Half by
#1 NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER ONE OF BARACK OBAMA'S FAVORITE BOOKS OF THE YEAR NAMED A BEST BOOK OF 2020 BY THE NEW YORK TIMES * THE WASHINGTON POST * NPR * PEOPLE * TIME MAGAZINE* VANITY FAIR * GLAMOUR 2021 WOMEN'S PRIZE FINALIST "Bennett's tone and style recalls James Baldwin and Jacqueline Woodson, but it's especially reminiscent of Toni Morrison's 1970 debut novel, The Bluest Eye." --Kiley Reid, Wall Street Journal "A story of absolute, universal timelessness ...For any era, it's an accomplished, affecting novel. For this moment, it's piercing, subtly wending its way toward questions about who we are and who we want to be...." - Entertainment Weekly From The New York Times-bestselling author of The Mothers, a stunning new novel about twin sisters, inseparable as children, who ultimately choose to live in two very different worlds, one black and one white. The Vignes twin sisters will always be identical. But after growing up together in a small, southern black community and running away at age sixteen, it's not just the shape of their daily lives that is different as adults, it's everything: their families, their communities, their racial identities. Many years later, one sister lives with her black daughter in the same southern town she once tried to escape. The other secretly passes for white, and her white husband knows nothing of her past. Still, even separated by so many miles and just as many lies, the fates of the twins remain intertwined. What will happen to the next generation, when their own daughters' storylines intersect? Weaving together multiple strands and generations of this family, from the Deep South to California, from the 1950s to the 1990s, Brit Bennett produces a story that is at once a riveting, emotional family story and a brilliant exploration of the American history of passing. Looking well beyond issues of race, The Vanishing Half considers the lasting influence of the past as it shapes a person's decisions, desires, and expectations, and explores some of the multiple reasons and realms in which people sometimes feel pulled to live as something other than their origins. As with her New York Times-bestselling debut The Mothers, Brit Bennett offers an engrossing page-turner about family and relationships that is immersive and provocative, compassionate and wise.
Call Number: Online AccessISBN: 9780525536970Publication Date: 2020-06-02
Freshwater by
An extraordinary debut novel, Freshwater explores the surreal experience of having a fractured self. It centers around a young Nigerian woman, Ada, who develops separate selves within her as a result of being born "with one foot on the other side." Unsettling, heartwrenching, dark, and powerful, Freshwater is a sharp evocation of a rare way of experiencing the world, one that illuminates how we all construct our identities. Ada begins her life in the south of Nigeria as a troubled baby and a source of deep concern to her family.
Call Number: PR9387.9.E42 F74 2018ISBN: 9780802127358Publication Date: 2018-02-13
Red at the Bone by
"Two families from different social classes are joined together by an unexpected pregnancy and the child that it produces. As the book opens in 2001, it is the evening of sixteen-year-old Melody's coming of age ceremony in her grandparents' Brooklyn brownstone. Watched lovingly by her relatives and friends, making her entrance to the music of Prince, she wears a special custom-made dress. But the event is not without poignancy. Sixteen years earlier, that very dress was measured and sewn for a different wearer: Melody's mother, for her own ceremony -- a celebration that ultimately never took place"--Adapted from jacket.
Call Number: PS3573.O64524 R43 2019ISBN: 9780525535270Publication Date: 2019-09-17
Sing, Unburied, Sing by
A searing and profound Southern odyssey by National Book Award winner Jesmyn Ward. In Jesmyn Ward's first novel since her National Book Award-winning Salvage the Bones, this singular American writer brings the archetypal road novel into rural twenty-first-century America. Drawing on Morrison and Faulkner, The Odyssey and the Old Testament, Ward gives us an epochal story, a journey through Mississippi's past and present that is both an intimate portrait of a family and an epic tale of hope and struggle. Ward is a major American writer, multiply awarded and universally lauded, and in Sing, Unburied, Sing she is at the height of her powers. Jojo and his toddler sister, Kayla, live with their grandparents, Mam and Pop, and the occasional presence of their drug-addicted mother, Leonie, on a farm on the Gulf Coast of Mississippi. Leonie is simultaneously tormented and comforted by visions of her dead brother, which only come to her when she's high; Mam is dying of cancer; and quiet, steady Pop tries to run the household and teach Jojo how to be a man. When the white father of Leonie's children is released from prison, she packs her kids and a friend into her car and sets out across the state for Parchman farm, the Mississippi State Penitentiary, on a journey rife with danger and promise. Sing, Unburied, Sing grapples with the ugly truths at the heart of the American story and the power, and limitations, of the bonds of family. Rich with Ward's distinctive, musical language, Sing, Unburied, Sing is a majestic new work and an essential contribution to American literature"--
Living with his grandparents and sister on a Gulf Coast farm, Jojo navigates the challenges of his mother's addictions and his grandmother's cancer before the release of his father from prison prompts a road trip of danger and hope.
Call Number: PS3623.A7323 S56 2017ISBN: 9781501126079Publication Date: 2018-05-08
Between the World and Me by
Coates takes readers along on his journey through America's history of race and its contemporary resonances through a series of awakenings -- moments when he discovered some new truth about our long, tangled history of race, whether through his myth-busting professors at Howard University, a trip to a Civil War battlefield with a rogue historian, a journey to Chicago's South Side to visit aging survivors of 20th century America's 'long war on black people,' or a visit with the mother of a beloved friend who was shot down by the police.
Call Number: E185.615 .C6335 2015ISBN: 9780812993547Publication Date: 2015-07-14
The Beautiful Struggle by
A memoir of growing up in the tough world of Baltimore in the 1980s chronicles the relationship between the author and his father, a Vietnam vet and Black Panther affiliate, and his campaign to keep his sons from falling victim to the temptations of the streets.
Call Number: F189.B153 C63 2009ISBN: 9780385527460Publication Date: 2009-01-06
I Almost Forgot about You by
Dr. Georgia Young's wonderful life--great friends, family, and successful career--aren't enough to keep her from feeling stuck and restless. When she decides to make some major changes in her life, quitting her job as an optometrist, and moving house, she finds herself on a wild journey that may or may not include a second chance at love.
Call Number: PS3563.C3868 I53 2016ISBN: 9781101902578Publication Date: 2016-06-07
- Adeniran, Rita K. “Application of Juneteenth to Nursing: Passion, Perseverance, Pride, and Purpose Can Drive Change.” Holistic Nursing Practice, vol. 36, no. 5, 2022, pp. 266–67, https://doi.org/10.1097/HNP.0000000000000548."Individual nurses, higher educational institutions, professional organizations, such as the National Academy of Practice,7 and leaders have a role in eliminating inequities in the nursing profession."
- Beasley, Heather K., et al. “What Does Juneteenth Mean in STEMM?” Cell, vol. 186, no. 12, 2023, pp. 2501–05, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cell.2023.05.011."Juneteenth commemorates the freeing of the last large group of enslaved people in 1865 at the end of the American Civil War. We asked several Black scientists what Juneteenth means to them in the context of science, technology, engineering, mathematics, and medicine (STEMM)? Their answers run the emotional gamut."
- Editorial Team. “Juneteenth in STEMM: Remember, Recognize, Reflect.” Cell, vol. 186, no. 12, 2023, pp. 2493–94, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cell.2023.05.017."In this issue of Cell, we present several pieces from more than 70 Black scientists who shed light on the answers to this question within the context of what Juneteenth means in science, technology, engineering, mathematics, and medicine (STEMM)."
- Hooker, Jacob M. “A Reflection on Juneteenth and the Diversity of Our Chemical Neuroscience Community.” ACS Chemical Neuroscience, vol. 12, no. 13, 2021, pp. 2254–55, https://doi.org/10.1021/acschemneuro.1c00378."The onus should be on those that live with enormous privilege to help cultivate the conversation, facilitate the open environment, but most of all—listen."
- Long, Sahira. “Juneteenth: First Food for Thought.” Breastfeeding Medicine, vol. 16, no. 6, 2021, pp. 446–446, https://doi.org/10.1089/bfm.2021.29184.sjl."Therefore, based on the Seventh Generation Principle, I am certainly being impacted by the choices that were not available to my great-great-great grandmother, including the choice of how she would feed her children."
- Mays, Alfred, et al. “Juneteenth in STEMM and the Barriers to Equitable Science.” Cell, vol. 186, no. 12, 2023, pp. 2510–17, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cell.2023.05.016."We are 52 Black scientists. Here, we establish the context of Juneteenth in STEMM and discuss the barriers Black scientists face, the struggles they endure, and the lack of recognition they receive. We review racism’s history in science and provide institutional-level solutions to reduce the burdens on Black scientists."
All Different Now: Juneteenth, the first day of freedom by Call Number: Lewis Curriculum Collection (6th Floor) PZ7.J629 All 2014
Celebremos Juneteenth by Call Number: Curriculum Collection (6th Floor) PZ73 .W38 2007ISBN: 9781600602474Publication Date: 1995-10-01Cassandra and her family have moved to her parents' hometown in Texas, but it does not feel like home to Cassandra until she experiences Juneteenth, a Texas tradition celebrating the end of slavery.
Freedom's Child by Call Number: Curriculum PZ7.W515 Fr 1997ISBN: 0689802692Publication Date: 1997-04-01
The Story of Juneteenth: an interactive history adventure by Call Number: Lewis Library Curriculum Collection (6th Floor) E185.93.T4 O85 2015
Juneteenth for Mazie by Call Number: Lewis Library Curriculum Collection (6th Floor) PZ7.C78485 Ju 2015
I Lay My Stitches Down: poems of American slavery by Call Number: Lewis Library Curriculum Collection (6th Floor) PS3607.R3275 I15 2012
In the Shadow of Liberty: the hidden history of slavery, four presidents, and five black lives by Call Number: Lewis Library Curriculum Collection (6th Floor) E444 .D36 2016
The Price of Freedom: how one town stood up to slavery by Call Number: Lewis Curriculum Collection (6th Floor) E450 .F784 2013
Children of the Emancipation by Call Number: Curriculum Collection E453 .K56 2000ISBN: 1575053969Publication Date: 2005-01-01
Juneteenth : the story behind the celebration by Call Number: E185.93.T4 C684 2021 & Online AccessISBN: 9781649670007Publication Date: 2021-05-25
Black Ghost of Empire by Call Number: Online Access & HM1266 .M38 2022ISBN: 9781982123475Publication Date: 2022-04-19
I've Been Here All the While by Call Number: Online AccessISBN: 9780812297980Publication Date: 2021-03-12
Standing Soldiers, Kneeling Slaves by Call Number: E468.9 .S28 1997ISBN: 069101616XPublication Date: 1997-11-23
Envisioning Emancipation by Call Number: E185.2 .W68 2013ISBN: 9781439909850Publication Date: 2012-12-05
On Juneteenth by Call Number: Popular Reading Collection E185.93.T4 G67 2021ISBN: 9781631498831Publication Date: 2021-05-04- Standing Soldiers, Kneeling Slaves by Call Number: E468.9 .S28 1997ISBN: 069101616XPublication Date: 1997-11-23
The Broken Constitution by Call Number: E457 .F45 2021ISBN: 9780374116644Publication Date: 2021-11-02
The Color of Abolition by Call Number: E449 .H663 2022ISBN: 9781328900241Publication Date: 2022-02-08
The Crooked Path to Abolition by Call Number: E449 .O1145 2021ISBN: 9781324005858Publication Date: 2021-01-12
Teaching Black History to White People by Call Number: E184.7 .M65 2021ISBN: 9781477324851Publication Date: 2021-09-14
The 1619 Project by Call Number: Popular Reading Collection E441 .A15 2021ISBN: 9780593230572Publication Date: 2021-11-16
Relevant Research Guides
Emancipation Road by
Publication Date: 2014This first episode takes a look into the history of slavery in the United States, from the beginnings of the Atlantic slave trade to the Civil War.
Up From Slavery by Publication Date: 2011This portion of the series talks about the causes of and start of the Civil War; the evolution of the drive to win on each side of the conflict and of President Lincoln's bold step towards freedom for all slaves in the United States.
- Black Studies in Video This link opens in a new windowDocumentaries, newsreels, interviews and archival footage surveying the evolution of black culture in the United States. Includes films covering history, politics, art and culture, family structure, social and economic pressures, and gender relations.