Call for Submissions: Juneteenth and the Black Experience

Editor: Robert Greene II, Ph.D.

Black Perspectives is inviting blog posts centering around the Juneteenth holiday in time for the celebration on June 19. On June 19, 1865, federal troops under the command of Gordon Granger brought word to the enslaved population of Galveston, Texas, of their freedom. Since the first celebration of Juneteenth in 1866, it has been a critical part of African American culture in Texas and across the United States.

In the aftermath of the resurgent Black Lives Matter protests in the summer of 2020, the holiday took on new—and many would say increasingly commercialized—meaning. Now, more than ever, many Americans are aware of a holiday that once was celebrated only in some Black communities. The posts should cover one of the following topics in relationship to the holiday:

• The origins of the Juneteenth holiday.
• The legacy of the Juneteenth holiday among African Americans and within the African diaspora.
• The history of Black Texas since 1865.
• The relationship between Juneteenth and other holidays celebrating emancipation in the United States and/or the world
• Memory of the end of slavery and the American Civil War among African Americans.

The posts themselves should be between 900 to 1500 words. They must be submitted to editors@blackperspectives.org no later than 11:59pm ET on Monday, June 14. All submissions will undergo a peer review process before they are accepted. Please click here for more details on the blog’s submission guidelines.

About the Editor

Robert Greene II is the Lead Associate Editor of Black Perspectives. He is an Assistant Professor of History in the Department of Humanities at Claflin University. Dr. Greene serves as book reviews editor and blogger for the Society of U.S. Intellectual Historians. He also serves as Chief Instructor for the South Carolina Progressive Network’s Modjeska Simkins School of Human Rights. Currently, Dr. Greene is co-editing, with Tyler D. Parry, a collection of essays on the history of African Americans at the University of South Carolina. He is also working on his first book, examining the role of Southern African Americans in the Democratic Party from 1964 through the 1990s. Finally, Dr. Greene has published several articles and book chapters on the intersection of memory, politics, and African American history, and has written for numerous popular publications, including The Nation, Oxford American, Dissent, Scalawag, Jacobin, In These Times, Politico, and The Washington Post. Follow him on Twitter @robgreeneII.