By Ben Jealous
My grandmother taught me we are all born into a great, unfinished struggle.
She meant the struggle for justice. For truth. For dignity.
Next week is Juneteenth, a time of year I always think about this lesson. I think about all the freedom fighters – famous and forgotten – who walked before us. And I think about all of us who walk now, still trying to finish what they began.
Juneteenth is not just about the day the last enslaved people in Texas finally learned they were free – two and a half years after the Emancipation Proclamation. It is about the delay. The gap between law and justice. It is about how long freedom takes when you leave it up to power.
But most of all, Juneteenth is about the power and importance of truth.
In every generation, there are people who want to bury the truth. We are living through one of those times right now.
Recently I wrote about how the Trump administration’s attempts to omit Black heroes and accomplishments from the American story – as well as those from other marginalized groups – in its scorched earth assault on diversity, equity, and inclusion.
As we fight the erasure of important heroes and historymakers from our past, there are pathbreaking heroes of today’s generations who have been targeted. I was recently reminded of this by Major Elizabeth Stephens.
“There’s a lot of focus on dead people, but a lot of us are still here,” Maj. Stephens told me. “People don’t understand what it’s like to watch yourself be erased, watch your achievements invalidated and the recognition you’ve received for those achievements taken away.”
Among her many distinctions, Maj. Stephens is the first Black female graduate of the US Naval Academy to be selected as a Naval Aviator in the Marine Corps. She was the first Black woman to pilot the CH-46E and the first woman to pilot the MV-22 Osprey. For years, pictures of her and commemorations of these groundbreaking accomplishments were regular features in government buildings, Naval events, and on military websites.
Now, just because she is a Black woman, her image and achievements are being swept into the dustbin, along with many other notable examples of Black heroism, as part of the Trump administration’s “DEI purge.”
Indeed, if you Google Elizabeth Okoreeh-Baah – Major Stephens’s name at the time she served – one of the top results is a link to the US Department of Defense for a photo titled “Osprey Pilot” with the description, “Marine Corps Capt. Elizabeth A. Okoreeh-Baah, the first female MV-22 Osprey pilot, stands on a flightline in Iraq after a combat operation, March 12, 2008.” However, click the link and you end up on a defense.gov page with the error message “404 – Page Not Found.”
At least this was the situation last Friday when I checked. I searched her name on defense.gov just in case the page was moved. No results.
Burying the achievements and contributions of our heroes rewrites history to fit a warped narrative of America that serves no one. What does serve all our interests is remembering.
And, on Juneteenth especially, that includes remembering not only that historical nail in slavery’s coffin, but the people, places, and events that were part of the long fight to end that abhorrent institution.
Remembering that Harriet Tubman was not only the most famous conductor of the Underground Railroad but a nurse and a spy for the Union Army and the first woman in US history to lead a military raid. That raid – at Combahee Ferry in South Carolina – freed more than 700 people in a single night.
Remembering that Black churches like Quinn Chapel AME – the oldest Black church in Chicago – and Pilgrim Baptist in St. Paul, were not just places of worship. They were stations on the railroad to freedom.
Remembering the story of Joshua Glover – a man who escaped slavery in Missouri, was captured in Wisconsin under the Fugitive Slave Act, and then liberated from jail by a crowd of thousands of abolitionists. His rescue helped spark the creation of the Republican Party – back when it was the party of Lincoln.
These are not footnotes. They are the foundation.
They tell us something essential about who we have been, who we are, and who we can still be.
Now, as the Trump administration attacks anything and everything recognizing diversity, as it moves to gut staff and resources from the very departments tasked with preserving our history, we need to be worried. We need to be worried about the future of sites that are part of the National Park Service’s Underground Railroad Network to Freedom program.
The battle to preserve our history – including the history still being made today – is not separate from the fight for our future. What we remember shapes what we do. When we tell the stories of the people who fought for freedom, we see ourselves in them– and find the courage to keep going.
Juneteenth is about facing the hardest parts of our past without flinching and celebrating the progress we have made. It is about believing that America can still become the country it claims to be.
That belief is what sustained my grandmother. It is what fuels me. And it can be a source of hope for all of us.
Ben Jealous is the Executive Director of the Sierra Club and a Professor of Practice at the University of Pennsylvania.
