From New York, this is Democracy Now.

For me, when I think of Juneteenth, part of what I think about is both the both-endedness

of it, that it is this moment in which we mourn the fact that freedom was kept from hundreds

of thousands of enslaved people for years and for months after it had been attained by them.

And then at the same time, celebrating the end of one of the most egregious things

that this country has ever done. Today, a democracy now special to mark Juneteenth,

the federal holiday commemorating June 19, 1865, when enslaved people in Galveston, Texas,

learned of their freedom more than two years after President Lincoln signed the Emancipation Proclamation.

We'll speak to Clint Smith, author of How the Word Is Past, A Reckoning with the History of Slavery Across America.

Then, to the pioneering musical artist Riannon Giddens, who won a Pulitzer Prize for

her opera, Omar, about Omar Ibn Saeed, a Muslim scholar in Africa who was sold into slavery in the

1800s. It's just so amazing that Omar's story has been, is being lifted by this opera, being lifted by the

existence of this work, and more and more people are knowing about him. Because the whole point

for me was to complicate the, again, the complication, to complicate the American narrative,

like who gets to say that they represent the American story.

Riannon Giddens was a founding member of the Grammy-winning black string band that Carolina

chocolate drops. Her banjo playing can also be heard on Beyonce's hit single, Texas Hold'em.

All that and more, coming up.

Welcome to Democracy Now, Democracy Now.org, the War and Peace Report. I'm Amy Goodman.

Today, a Democracy Now special on this, the newly created Juneteenth Federal Holiday,

which marks the end of slavery in the

United States. The Juneteenth commemoration dates back to the last days of the Civil War,

...