This Wednesday, America will celebrate Juneteenth as a federal holiday for the fourth time. Yet the holiday, born out of bipartisanship, is becoming more divisive each year.
The Left has coopted Juneteenth to push for radical racial policies such as reparations and exclude most Americans from its celebration. As a result, many conservatives now oppose the federal holiday.
But in the eyes of this Texas historian, it’s a mistake to abandon a unifying national holiday to the manipulations of the Left. We should instead do what conservatives are best at: Get back to the roots.
Until the past four years, Juneteenth was an uncontroversial celebration of American freedom and the end of slavery in Texas. The holiday commemorates the day Union Gen. Gordon Granger issued General Order No. 3 in Galveston, informing Texas of the Emancipation Proclamation, freeing the state’s…
