By Nyleve Eiram

Writer/Reporter

Every year on June 19, Black Americans gather to celebrate Juneteenth. Across Minnesota, and throughout the country, communities come together for festivals, educational events, music, food, family reunions, and celebrations of Black culture and resilience.

Yet for many Black Americans, the true history behind Juneteenth remains incomplete.

Some know it marks the end of slavery in Texas. Others know it is now a federal holiday. What many do not understand is that Juneteenth is connected to a much larger story that includes the Atlantic slave trade, the institution of American slavery, Indigenous history, and generations of people whose freedom was delayed long after it was legally declared.

To understand Juneteenth, we must first understand how we got there.

The Atlantic slave trade was one of the largest forced migrations in human history, and beginning in the 1500s, European nations established trade routes connecting Europe, Africa, and the Americas. While goods, weapons, and manufactured products moved across these routes, millions of African men, women, and children were treated as commodities and forcibly transported across the Atlantic Ocean.

These individuals were not immigrants seeking opportunity. They were people who were kidnapped, captured during wars, sold by rival groups, or forcibly removed from their homes. Once captured, many were marched hundreds of miles to coastal forts where they were imprisoned before being loaded onto slave ships.

The voyage across the Atlantic became known as the Middle Passage.

Conditions aboard these ships were horrific. Human beings were chained together in overcrowded spaces with little food, little water, poor sanitation, and widespread disease. Many died before reaching the Americas. Those who survived arrived to a future they never chose. Historians estimate that more than 12 million Africans were transported across the Atlantic during the slave trade. Millions never survived the journey.

In recent years, debates have emerged regarding how slavery should be taught in schools.

Some narratives have suggested that enslaved Africans somehow benefited from slavery because they learned skills. Others have implied that people had choices within the system. The historical record tells a different story. Slavery in America was built on force, violence, coercion, and laws designed to treat human beings as property.

People did not choose to be enslaved.

People did not choose to have their families separated.

People did not choose to be bought, sold, whipped, beaten, or denied basic human rights.

The institution that developed in America became known as chattel slavery. Under this system, enslaved people were legally classified as property and could be bought, sold, inherited, mortgaged, and transferred like livestock or land. Even more devastating, children inherited the enslaved status of their mothers, creating generations of people born into bondage without any possibility of consent.

That is not choice. That is oppression codified into law.

The economic foundation of the United States was built in large part through the labor of enslaved Africans and their descendants. They cultivated tobacco, cotton, rice, indigo, and sugar. Built roads, ports, homes, businesses, and infrastructure. They worked as carpenters, blacksmiths, cooks, nurses, artisans, laborers, and skilled craftsmen.

Many of the skills enslaved people developed were not opportunities given to them. They were survival tools developed under extraordinary circumstances. Their labor generated wealth for plantation owners, corporations, financial institutions, and governments while they themselves were denied the freedom they helped create for others.

One of the most recognizable plantation sites in America is Middleton Place in South Carolina. Today, visitors often see beautiful gardens, preserved architecture, and historical exhibits. What is sometimes overlooked is that the wealth that created Middleton Place was built through the labor of hundreds of enslaved Africans and their descendants.

Behind every historic structure is a story of human beings whose names often went unrecorded. Behind every garden and estate is a history of forced labor. For descendants of enslaved people, plantations are not simply historic landmarks. They are reminders of both suffering and survival.

For me, this history is deeply personal. I am a descendant of both enslaved Africans and Indigenous ancestors, including Choctaw ancestry. Like many Afro Indigenous families throughout the South, my family’s history exists at the intersection of two painful chapters in American history: slavery and the displacement of Native peoples.

Family history and genealogical research indicate ancestral connections to both the legacy of the Middleton plantation system and Indigenous ancestry that survived despite generations of colonization, forced removal, and cultural erasure.

That means these stories are not distant history to me. They are family history.

The Choctaw people originally lived throughout what is now Mississippi, Alabama, and parts of Louisiana. Long before European settlement, the Choctaw Nation maintained thriving communities, governments, trade systems, and agricultural traditions.

However, the arrival of European settlers brought disease, warfare, land theft, and eventually forced removal. During the 1830s, thousands of Choctaw citizens were removed from their ancestral homelands through policies that became part of what we now know as the Trail of Tears.

Yet history is rarely simple.

While the Choctaw people experienced tremendous injustice, some wealthy Choctaw citizens also adopted plantation systems similar to those used by white Southern slaveholders.

Some owned enslaved Africans and brought them with them during removal to Indian Territory, located in present day Oklahoma. Acknowledging this reality does not diminish the suffering experienced by Indigenous communities. Likewise, Indigenous suffering does not diminish the suffering experienced by enslaved Africans. Both truths exist. Both deserve acknowledgment.

On January 1, 1863, President Abraham Lincoln issued the Emancipation Proclamation. However, freedom did not arrive immediately for everyone. In Confederate territories where Union forces had not established control, slavery continued despite the proclamation.

Texas became one of the clearest examples.

On June 19, 1865, Union Major General Gordon Granger arrived in Galveston, Texas, and announced that enslaved people were free. For many enslaved individuals, it was the first time they learned freedom had already been declared more than two years earlier.

That day became known as Juneteenth.

Juneteenth is not simply a celebration of a historical event. It is a reminder that freedom delayed is freedom denied. It is a reminder that legal declarations mean little without enforcement. It is a reminder that generations of Black Americans endured unimaginable hardship while continuing to build families, communities, businesses, churches, schools, and futures.

Juneteenth honors survival. Juneteenth honors resilience. Juneteenth honors those who endured slavery and those who continued fighting for civil rights long after emancipation.

For generations, Black communities celebrated Juneteenth long before it received national recognition. Activists spent decades educating the public and advocating for official recognition of the holiday. In 2021, Juneteenth became a federal holiday, making it the first new federal holiday established in the United States since Martin Luther King Jr. Day.

Minnesota later joined a growing number of states recognizing Juneteenth as an official state holiday. Today, celebrations across the Twin Cities and throughout Minnesota continue to honor the holiday’s significance while educating future generations about the history behind it.

As an Afro Indigenous woman, I carry both histories.

I carry the legacy of enslaved ancestors who survived a system designed to strip them of their humanity. I carry the legacy of Indigenous ancestors who survived removal, displacement, and attempts to erase their culture. I carry the resilience of generations who endured circumstances designed to break them and yet continued to build families, communities, traditions, and futures.

When I celebrate Juneteenth, I am honoring them.

I am honoring ancestors whose names may never appear in history books, but whose strength made it possible for future generations, including myself and my son, to stand where we are today.

As a descendant of enslaved people, I believe it is my responsibility to help preserve and protect the truth of our history. The story of this nation cannot be fully told without acknowledging the millions of enslaved Africans and their descendants whose labor, sacrifice, innovation, and resilience helped build America. The roads, businesses, plantations, ports, railways, government institutions, and economic foundations that fueled this country’s growth were built in part through the blood, sweat, and forced labor of my ancestors and countless others whose names history often failed to record.

For me, telling the truth about slavery, Indigenous history, Juneteenth, and the struggles that shaped this nation is not about division. It is about remembrance. It is about honoring those who survived the unimaginable and ensuring future generations understand both the pain and the perseverance that helped shape the United States. If we are willing to celebrate the achievements of our ancestors, we must also be willing to tell the truth about their sacrifices.

As a journalist, storyteller, Afro Indigenous woman, and descendant of enslaved people, I see it as part of my duty to ensure these stories are not forgotten, rewritten, minimized, or erased. History belongs to all of us, but truth demands that we tell it honestly.

History is not always comfortable. It contains triumph and tragedy, resilience and injustice, progress and pain.

Understanding the Atlantic slave trade, American slavery, Indigenous history, the legacy of plantations, and the significance of Juneteenth help us understand who we are as a nation.

The truth is not meant to divide us. The truth helps us learn. The truth helps us grow. The truth honors the enslaved Africans who survived the Middle Passage. The truth honors the Indigenous nations who survived removal and colonization. The truth honors the descendants who continue carrying these stories forward.

As we celebrate Juneteenth this year, let us honor those who came before us, remember the stories too often left out of our textbooks, and continue building communities rooted in truth, understanding, justice, and hope.

Because freedom is not just a chapter in history. It is a responsibility carried forward by every generation.

And as descendants of those whose labor helped build this nation, we owe it to them to tell their stories accurately, completely, and without fear.