Juneteenth 2021: 10 Quotes About Slavery, Freedom On Black Independence Day

Juneteeth, a celebration marking the end of slavery in Texas, is marked annually on June 18. It is also known as Black Independence Day.

Derived from the words "June" and "Nineteenth," Juneteenth commemorates the hardships endured by former slaves as well as the freedom they finally attained. On this day, Gen. Gordon Granger arrived in Galveston, Texas, to deliver the message of freedom of the slaves.

This happened after Abraham Lincoln signed the Emancipation Proclamation.

"The people of Texas are informed that in accordance with a Proclamation from the Executive of the United States, all slaves are free. This involves an absolute equality of rights and rights of property between former masters and slaves, and the connection heretofore existing between them becomes that between employer and hired laborer," the order read.

Here are some quotes about slavery and emancipation, collected from Notable Quotes and Good Reads:

1. “Whenever I hear anyone arguing for slavery, I feel a strong impulse to see it tried on him personally.” - Abraham Lincoln

2. "Well, the way it was explained to me, the 19th of June wasn't the exact day the Negro was freed. But that's the day they told that they was free ... and my daddy told me that they whooped and hollered and bored holers in trees with augers and stopped it up with powder and light that, and that would be their blast for the celebration." - Charles Morgan, Texas resident quoted in an essay on freedom

3. “Knowledge makes a man unfit to be a slave.” - Frederick Douglass

4. "Slavery is no scholar, no improver; it does not love the whistle of the railroad; it does not love the newspaper, the mail-bag, a college, a book or a preacher who has the absurd whim of saying what he thinks; it does not increase the white population; it does not improve the soil; everything goes to decay." - Ralph Waldo Emerson

5. "Negro slavery is an evil of colossal magnitude." - John Adams

6. "Every year we must remind successive generations that this event triggered a series of events that one by one defines the challenges and responsibilities of successive generations. That’s why we need this holiday.” - Texas Rep. Al Edwards

7. "I freed a thousand slaves I could have freed a thousand more if only they knew they were slaves." - Harriet Tubman

8. "My people have a country of their own to go to if they choose... Africa... but, this America belongs to them just as much as it does to any of the white race... in some ways even more so, because they gave the sweat of their brow and their blood in slavery so that many parts of America could become prosperous and recognized in the world. " - Josephine Baker

9. "Slavery is theft -- theft of a life, theft of work, theft of any property or produce, theft even of the children a slave might have borne." - Kevin Bales

10. "Anytime anyone is enslaved, or in any way deprived of his liberty, if that person is a human being, as far as I am concerned he is justified to resort to whatever methods necessary to bring about his liberty again." - Malcolm X