June 19th celebrates the announcement of the abolition of slavery in Texas (two and a half years after the Emancipation Proclamation abolished slavery). It is a day to celebrate the freedom and also to remember the genocide of enslaved Africans and African Americans.
The CPP Library encourage readers of all ages to learn the specific history of Juneteenth, and explore the many ways different communities have honored the spirit of the day.
For more resources on Juneteenth, check out https://libguides.library.cpp.edu/ews/juneteenth
Cal Poly Pomona University Library
Juneteenth Book List
The essential, sweeping story of Juneteenth's integral importance to American history, as told by a Pulitzer Prize-winning historian and Texas native. Weaving together American history, dramatic family chronicle, and searing episodes of memoir, Annette Gordon-Reed's On Juneteenth provides a historian's view of the country's long road to Juneteenth, recounting both its origins in Texas and the enormous hardships that African-Americans have endured in the century since, from Reconstruction through Jim Crow and beyond.
Juneteenth Texas, received a San Antonio Conservation Society award for the preservation of historic buildings, objects and places relating to the history of Texas and its natural beauty and all that is admirably distinctive of our state, and to educate the public with knowledge of our inherited regional values.
In Juneteenth, Ralph Ellison evokes the rhythms of jazz and gospel and ordinary speech to tell a powerful tale of a prodigal son in the twentieth century. At the time of his death in 1994, Ellison was still expanding his novel in other directions, envisioning a grand, perhaps multivolume, story cycle. Always, in his mind, the character Hickman and the story of Sunraider's life from birth to death were the dramatic heart of the narrative.
Juneteenth has been touted as a national day celebrating the end of slavery. This is the first scholarly book to delve into the history behind Juneteenth. Using decades of research in archives around the nation, this book helps separate myth from reality and tells the story behind the celebration in a way that provides new understanding and appreciation for the event.
Juneteenth -- the day Texan slaves found out they had been freed, two years after Abraham Lincoln issued the Emancipation Proclamation -- is June's favorite holiday. This year, though, her cousin Lillie will be there and is used to celebrating the Fourth of July and has no interest in Southern traditions. But Aunt Marshall, knows the significance of Juneteenth -- she was about June's age on June 19th, 1865, when the celebration began in Texas -- and she just may be able to convince Lillie that Juneteenth is not a dumb old slave holiday, but a part of her heritage, and the first of many of freedom's gifts.
With the abolition of the transatlantic slave trade in 1808, many African Americans began calling for a day of public thanksgiving to commemorate this important step toward freedom. During the ensuing century, black leaders built on this foundation and constructed a distinctive and vibrant tradition through their celebrations of the end of slavery in New York State, the British West Indies, and eventually the United States as a whole. Kachun demonstrates that, even as these annual rituals helped define African Americans as a people by fostering a sense of shared history, heritage, and identity, they were also sites of ambiguity and conflict.
The Emancipation Proclamation is one of the most important documents in American history. Renowned photographic historian Deborah Willis and historian of slavery Barbara Krauthamer have amassed 150 photographs--some never before published--from the antebellum days of the 1850s through the New Deal era of the 1930s. Envisioning Emancipation illustrates what freedom looked like for black Americans in the Civil War era. Filled with powerful images of lives too often ignored or erased from historical records, Envisioning Emancipation provides a new perspective on American culture.
A riveting collection of the hardships, hairbreadth escapes, and mortal struggles of enslaved people seeking freedom: These are the true stories of the Underground Railroad.
Four Hundred Souls is a unique one-volume "community" history of African Americans. The editors, Ibram X. Kendi and Keisha N. Blain, have assembled ninety brilliant writers, each of whom takes on a five-year period of that four-hundred-year span. The writers explore their periods through a variety of techniques: historical essays, short stories, personal vignettes, and fiery polemics.
Written by civil rights leader and poet James Weldon Johnson in 1899, "Lift Ev'ry Voice and Sing" is sung in schools and churches throughout America. The popular, timeless song is recognized as a testimonial to the struggle and achievements of African-American people past, present, and future.
The Odyssey of Black Men in America - An Anthology
In From Here to Equality, William Darity Jr. and A. Kirsten Mullen confront injustices head-on and make the most comprehensive case to date for economic reparations for U.S. descendants of slavery. Darity and Mullen offer a detailed roadmap for an effective reparations program, including a substantial payment to each documented U.S. black descendant of slavery. Taken individually, any one of the three eras of injustice outlined by Darity and Mullen--slavery, Jim Crow, and modern-day discrimination--makes a powerful case for black reparations. Taken collectively, they are impossible to ignore.