160 Years Later, We’re Still Here: A Juneteenth Reflection

A personal reflection on Black girlhood, memory and the freedom we’re still reaching for.

On a random week during my 4th grade year, I came home from school and my dad told me it was time we watched Roots.

He told me it was about slavery, something I'd heard about in history class, of course, but it never felt real to me. It was always presented like some distant, unfortunate fact in a textbook. Something to memorize for the quiz, you know? Something that happened a long, long time ago.

Or at least I thought it was.

But this year marks 160 years since Juneteenth — 160 years since the final enslaved people in Galveston, Texas were told they were free. And even then, it didn’t mean true freedom. Not really. Not when Jim Crow followed. Not when segregation lingered. Not when generational trauma quietly wrapped itself around our family trees.

The First Time I Saw Slavery

Nothing could've prepared me for the horrors I saw in that film. I dreaded coming home every day until we finished the series. I was only 10.

It was graphic. It was violent. It was sobering. But I now realize, it was necessary.

Because some children never had the chance to dread it. Some were born into chains.

Some were born into silence. Some were born into systems so cruel they couldn’t even imagine what freedom looked like.

All they knew was the brutality. All they knew was the rape. All they knew was the pain. All they knew was bondage.

What We Inherited

And yet, they dreamed… They passed down names. They carved joy out of sorrow. They found rhythm in suffering. They became us.

Juneteenth is often described as the day the last enslaved people found out they were free. But that definition is too polished. It doesn’t account for the heartbreak in the waiting, the rage in the deception, the audacity of a government to delay a dream for two extra years after the Emancipation Proclamation was signed. Juneteenth wasn’t just a beginning.

It was a reminder: Even freedom can be late.

And yet, our people still rose. Still, they created.

Still Here

And we’re still here — living, loving, building, breathing life into what our ancestors were never allowed to imagine.

But being here doesn’t mean we’re free from all of it.

Because I’ve seen how racism disguises itself — not always in chains, but in the smirks, silences and systems that still surround us.

I remember walking through the hallways in high school and hearing the N-word roll off the tongues of non-Black classmates, like it was just another joke.

I remember how some painted themselves in blackface, sharing it online and captioning it like a punchline, like our pain was a costume they could try on for fun.

I remember sitting in classrooms led by teachers who told us white privilege didn’t exist, who refused to attend the Black History Month assembly, who made it clear that our stories weren’t worth their time.

And these weren’t strangers. These were people we had to sit next to, learn beside, work with, all while trying to shrink ourselves small enough to stay safe.

That was my normal. And that’s why I can’t talk about Juneteenth without talking about now.

It’s Ours Now

Because truthfully, the trauma didn’t stop in 1865. It just learned how to code-switch. It put on a suit. It went corporate. It got elected. It rewrote the textbooks. And still, we’re expected to smile through it. We’re expected to lead, to rise, to represent, to perform.

But we remember.

We remember the way they talked about Michelle Obama. We remember how they questioned Kamala’s every move. We remember the pain of watching George Floyd’s last breath, not as a moment, but as a mirror. We remember Freddie Gray, and how close that hit for those of us from Maryland. We remember how Black Lives Matter didn’t just “trend.” It shaped our childhoods, our worldview, our rage and our resilience.

Even now, I watch as our schools are threatened, our stories erased, our funding slashed and our voices dismissed.

My heart aches for my beloved HBCU, Florida A&M University, where those in power are quick to take over what we’ve built.

So no, this isn’t just history. This is inheritance.

It’s a reminder that every day we still get up to stride towards the lives our ancestors fought for, the ones they’d never get to see. It’s our responsibility to honor them and continue upholding their legacies.