June 19, 2022
Resources to Reflect on this Juneteenth
Juneteenth is a celebration of resilience and a reminder that no one is free until we are all free. Despite the symbolic gesture of Juneteenth being recognized as a federal holiday, there is still so much work to be done to address systemic inequities as a nation.
As a white-owned and -operated business, we recognize the importance of acknowledging our shortcomings, unlearning, learning, and redistributing. We are also committed to continuing to support efforts towards collective liberation.
Change must start locally. Look within your own community for initiatives that you can support. In our own backyard, we are proud to continue supporting the work of Kite’s Nest, an organization dedicated to building the collective capacity of young people to bring about healing, personal transformation, social connection, and systemic change, as well as the Hudson-Catskill Housing Coalition, a Black-led initiative that empowers public housing and low-income tenants to fight for housing justice.
This year, we collaborated with our Social Impact + Equity Advisor, Manpreet Kalra, to put together a list of resources to learn more about Juneteenth:
By Manpreet Kalra
Begin here with a listen
- '1619,' a Podcast From the New York Times
An audio series on how slavery has transformed America, connecting past and present through the oldest form of storytelling.
Articles to Read
- Juneteenth: The History of a New Holiday - New York Times
- Why Juneteenth Matters: It was Black Americans who delivered on Lincoln’s promise of “a new birth of freedom.” - New York Times
- Five myths about Juneteenth - The Washington Post
- The Best Way to Honor Juneteenth, According to Activists Who Helped Make It a National Holiday - Time
Watch + Listen
- Juneteenth Discussion with Kelly Navies, National Museum of African American History and Culture Oral History Specialist
- History of Juneteenth by Dr. Shennette Garrett-Scott
- Why All American Should Honor Juneteenth by Vox
- This is Why Juneteenth is Important for America by The Root
- The HBO documentary Frederick Douglass: In Five Speeches brings to life the words of our country’s most famous anti-slavery activist.
Books to Read
- On Juneteenth by Annette Gordon-Reed
- A Black Woman’s History of the United States by Daina Berry and Kali Gross
- Stamped from the Beginning: The Definitive History of Racist Ideas in America by Ibram X. Kendi
- We Were Eight Years in Power: An American Tragedy by Ta-Nehisi Coates
Weaving together American history, dramatic family chronicle, and searing episodes of memoir, Annette Gordon-Reed's On Juneteenth provides a historian's view of the country's 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.
This book is a compact, exceptionally diverse introduction to the history of Black women, from the first African woman who arrived in America to the women of today.
Some Americans insist that we're living in a post-racial society. But racist thought is not just alive and well in America — it is more sophisticated and more insidious than ever. And as award-winning historian Ibram X. Kendi argues, racist ideas have a long and lingering history, one in which nearly every great American thinker is complicit.
A collection of Coates’ essays originally printed in The Atlantic Magazine between 2008 – 2016 over the course of the Obama administration. Each essay is introduced with the author’s reflections.
