by Glenn Harris
Before being recognized as a federal holiday on June 17, 2021, Juneteenth lived in the stories Black communities shared. I learned about it the way so many of us did — not from a schoolbook, but from the stories told by elders, at cookouts, during church programs, and as part of family traditions. We still tell the story every year: that on June 19, 1865, Union soldiers arrived in Galveston, Texas, to announce that slavery had ended — two and a half years after the Emancipation Proclamation. Nearly 250,000 people Black people had remained unlawfully in bondage. Oral history kept this injustice from being erased.
Most people think of oral tradition simply as storytelling, but long before it became a federal holiday, oral history transformed Juneteenth into a movement-building strategy with insights for today. For over 150 years, Juneteenth was kept alive by Black families and communities — even as textbooks and federal calendars ignored it. Juneteenth became a cultural and political force not because the government officially recognized it, but because we told our story.
The current administration’s efforts to defund equity offices, restrict education, and censor Americans’ rights to freedom of speech and civil protest are some of the most consequential actions taken to allow and encourage racial injustice. These actions are counter to democratic practice and are an assault on equity and fundamental civil rights.
Juneteenth reminds us that remembrance and public truth-telling are essential to Black liberation. When official systems delay, whitewash, or erase the truth, oral tradition keeps it alive — and that act of remembering is a form of resistance. We must remain resilient in reclaiming our narrative by continuously telling our stories. While we are concerned about efforts to defund equity offices, restrict education, and censor freedom of speech rights, we know that oral traditions will support our ability to resist and reclaim that which has been lost.
Telling the truth out loud resists invisibility.
Just as each Juneteenth, we recall the stories of how our movement has resurged after each period of backlash, we must tell the story of this moment — what the administration is doing and its impact on people and communities — to prevent it from being whitewashed. The current attacks on diversity, equity, and inclusion, and on our movement for a multicultural democracy aren’t isolated — they are coordinated attempts to suppress what the public is allowed to know, feel, and remember.
For instance:
- The GI Bill is still widely remembered as a policy that expanded opportunity for WWII veterans, yet it routinely excluded Black service members. In Mississippi in 1947, only two of 3,229 VA home loans went to Black applicants. That distortion flattens a history of exclusion into a myth of shared prosperity.
- The Fair Housing Act is celebrated as a landmark civil rights law, but it came after decades of federally sanctioned redlining had already entrenched segregation. Enforcement remained weak for years, yet those delays are rarely acknowledged in how the law is remembered. Those protections are under threat again, as recent policies and lawsuits weaken the law’s power to address systemic housing discrimination.
- Racial equity work in government is being rolled back through defunding and executive orders. These attacks are framed as administrative adjustments and eliminating waste and fraud—but their real purpose is to erase efforts to correct structural harms.
- Erasure is being legalized in over 30 states as lawmakers are introducing legislation to ban diversity, equity, and inclusion programs and limit how race is taught. These bills don’t just restrict content—they aim to redefine the story of who we are as a country.
- Federal job cuts disproportionately impact Black workers despite being framed as unbiased cost-saving and efficiency measures. More than 18% of the federal workforce is Black, compared to just 12% of the civilian labor force overall, meaning this group will be the most impacted. The false race-neutral narrative is yet another erasure, another delay, and another story of inequity that risks going untold.
Downplaying or burying these actions attempts to limit what we’re allowed to teach or remember. But oral history is about controlling our education and narrative. It is a tool for organizing, resisting, and building a multiracial democracy.
Oral tradition isn’t just about preserving the past, it’s also about meeting the moment.
Oral history has sustained movements across generations, refusing to silence our truths. During the civil rights era, family stories and church sermons became informal education — equipping organizers with the language and lessons they needed to face down voter suppression and state violence. Programs like the Citizenship Schools, led by Septima Clark — a Black educator known as the “Queen Mother” of the Civil Rights Movement — used everyday spaces to pass on political knowledge.
Oral tradition isn’t just about preserving the past, it’s also about meeting the moment. It shows up in legacy practices passed down over generations, and in the urgent storytelling we see today.
In the Gullah Geechee communities of the South, knowledge of plant medicine passed down by elders has survived centuries of displacement and neglect, becoming a framework for collective care when modern health systems fail. These practices are being preserved through community gatherings, research, and grassroots health efforts.
Modern truth-telling continues through livestreams, community testimonies, podcasts, and digital oral histories that speak plainly about public safety, health care, housing, and other public goods. After Tyre Nichols was killed in Memphis, young people used Instagram and TikTok to share his story — narrating his life, his humanity, and the injustice in their own words. And, Derek Chauvin, the police officer who killed George Floyd, would have never been convicted without the video captured by a young woman.
In each case, oral tradition (and now video) doesn’t just preserve memory, it builds the political will to survive and act when institutions fall short. As historian Robin D.G. Kelley once wrote, “History is not a mere accounting of past events. It is a map drawn from memory, a way to survive and shape the future.” When so much is being rolled back, renamed, or denied — oral history still points the way forward.
Telling the truth out loud resists invisibility. Passing down the story protects what power tries to bury. If we want justice, we can’t wait for institutions to tell the full story. We have to tell it ourselves — and keep telling it until it’s impossible to deny.
