June 15th is one of the oldest celebrations marking the end of slavery in the U.S.

It's been celebrated by black people in this country for decades since the late 1800s.

It's time to celebrate life, love, and culture and neighborhood and connecting back to the

community. But federal recognition took more than a hundred years longer. The U.S. has only

recognized June 15th as a federal holiday since 2021. President Biden marked the occasion

last week with a massive concert on the south lawn of the White House.

America is a promise. A promise of freedom, liberty, and justice. The story of June 15th as we celebrate it is the story of the

ongoing fight to realize that promise. That was Vice President Kamala Harris. The holiday marks the date in 1865 when the last enslaved people in the U.S. learned that they were free.

When Major General Gordon Granger of the Union Army delivered the news of their freedom to enslaved black people in Galveston. But for African Americans, the fight for freedom began long before the Civil War.

And it didn't end with the emancipation proclamation. So we wanted to look back at a place and a time that marked a turning point in modern American history in the battle for civil rights.

1963 Birmingham, Alabama. Civil rights leader Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. called Birmingham, Alabama the most segregated city in the United States.

And in 1963 Dr. King and other leaders brought the battle there.

The drama ties the blame and its such and the men that the federal government not put us set in the city on them in disguise to face three out into the desecrification.

And the thousands of peaceful protesters that marched their skinflade by fire hoses torn away by police dogs. They were kids, children who were willing to put their lives on the line for freedom.

As a nation watched the violence unleashed on children, the brutal realities of segregation became harder to deny.

The events in Birmingham and elsewhere have so increased the cries, equality, that no city or state or legislative body can fruitfully choose to ignore them.

Coming up, we look back at the Birmingham Children's Campaign and talk to the people who helped make history.

From NPR, I'm Wana Summers. It's Monday, June 19th.

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It's Consider This from NPR. Birmingham, Alabama is celebrating the 60th anniversary of a moment in the Civil Rights movement that marked a turning point.

When leaders like Reverend Martin Luther King, Jr. looked at children to join the struggle for equal rights.

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