I’ve always liked the holiday Juneteenth. It’s one of those bittersweet holidays that remind us that to combat discrimination in this country you can’t just enforce the law; the people must be informed of their rights as well.
I’ve always liked the holiday Juneteenth. It’s one of those bittersweet holidays that remind us that to combat discrimination in this country, you can’t just enforce the law; the people must be informed of their rights as well.
For the uninitiated, Juneteenth celebrates the day when Union soldiers marched into Texas and informed slaves that they had actually been freed by President Abraham Lincoln’s Emancipation Proclamation three years earlier and had been working as slaves due to their owners keeping them from the truth. Of course there was no retribution against the slaveowners, who arguably had been breaking the law for years and holding American citizens against their will in unpaid servitude. However, at least the slaves were free, and by celebrating the holiday, we’re all reminded of the neverending battle against injustice that must be waged in this nation. As of January 29, Lilly Ledbetter with the help of President Barack Obama has given us all a new “Juneteenth” as it were. Freeing wage slaves in America from the laws of the Bush years as well as the tyranny imposed on workers from discriminatory employers.
On January 29, in one of his first and most audacious pieces of new legislation since being inaugurated as President of the United States, Barack Obama signed the Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act, thus ending a long and sordid odyssey for not only Ledbetter but for literally millions of women and minority employees throughout the United States, whether they knew it or not!
______
To read the rest of this article, subscribe to our digital or paper edition. For previous editions, contact us for details.
Copyright 2009 Chicago Defender. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.
About Post Author
