On Juneteenth

On Juneteenth, published in 2020, is the latest work of nonfiction by American legal historian and law professor Annette Gordon-Reed. In a series of essays, each contextualizing the road to Juneteenth, Gordon-Reed illuminates the various threads and peoples involved in the development of present-day Texas, particularly through the significance of Juneteenth. Juneteenth is a holiday recognizing the end of the institution of slavery. The holiday has been celebrated in Texas since the issuance of General Order No. 3 in Galveston, Texas, announcing the end of slavery two years after the Emancipation Proclamation. In later years, the celebration spread throughout Black communities of the United States, and it has only recently become a federally recognized holiday in 2021. On Juneteenth interprets Texas history with an eye toward the ways Texas history is indicative of a broader US history, and it also wrests the historical narrative and public image of Texas from white Anglo-American dominance by illuminating the inclusion, perspectives, and experiences of people of color in the region’s development. Gordon-Reed interweaves personal memoir and both dominant and non-dominant historical narrative to broaden readers’ understanding of Texas and the study of history. 

Chapter 1 centers on Texas in the public imagination and the state’s development as a region of Mexico, independent republic, US state, and Confederate state, exploring the centrality of slavery to this development in all its iterations. Chapter 2 involves the legal implications and practical realities of desegregation in the United States, including white people’s responses as well as Gordon-Reed’s experience as the first Black child to integrate Texas public schools. Chapter 3 focuses on the role of origin stories in a people’s sense of themselves while debunking myths about Black people’s inherent incapacity and demonstrating that Blackness is not the monolith that Anglo-American historical constructions have presented it to be. In Chapter 4, Gordon-Reed discusses the role of the Indigenous in Texas, noting they do not only belong to the past as dominant historical narratives have communicated. Chapter 5 emphasizes the function of myths and legends, especially the way idealizing historical figures obscures not only their human complexity but also the involvement of people of color in history’s development and how its acknowledgment complicates simplified, linear narratives and illuminates the contingency of history. Finally, in Chapter 6, Gordon-Reed discusses Reconstruction Era Texas, the issuance of General Order No. 3, and the celebration of Juneteenth, noting the holiday exemplifies the various threads of Texas and US history. 

On Juneteenth, then, approaches historical analysis by emphasizing that not only are history’s unfolding and interpretation contingent upon the perspectives and intentions of past and present actors but also that this contingency is more evident when various perspectives are acknowledged in the historical archives. Although Texas has been presented in the public imagination as a region of white men, On Juneteenth demonstrates people of color have been influential in the region’s development, and their experiences and perspectives complicate the public imagination as well as the historical narratives that have dominated classrooms and academic discourses.