Greetings, Loved Ones

Happy Juneteenth!

On this day of Jubilee, we celebrate the unfinished job of Black freedom. We honor our courageous and visionary Ancestors, who brought us this far down freedom’s road. We cling to the community that has always served as our refuge. We pledge to our children and future generations the continued struggle to make us free, not simply “free-ish.”

On June 19, 1865, General Gordon Granger delivered Field Order Number 3 to enslaved Black people in Galveston, Texas, two-and-a-half years after Abraham Lincoln issued the Emancipation Proclamation. What should be made clear is that our divinely led, brave, visionary Ancestors immediately defied that Order, which instructed them to “remain quietly at their present homes and work for wages.” Our beloved grandmothers, grandfathers took the issuance of the Field Order as an opening to seek full Black freedom.

They praised and honored the Creator - establishing churches and places of worship, developing intellectual tools through collective study, founding schools and colleges; they searched for loved ones who had been kidnapped and sold away from them, building Black towns and businesses, they honed creative tools and birthed art, and they demanded reparations to begin to repair the damage brought by centuries of attempted dehumanization, stolen labor, and stolen lives.

On this Juneteenth, we must invest ourselves in the deep and long reparations struggle by honoring those who committed their life to this work. We call the names Belinda Sutton Royall, Sojourner Truth, Callie House and Isaiah Dickerson, Queen Mother Moore, Randall Robinson, John Conyers, and countless others. We immerse ourselves in study and invest deeply in the contemporary struggle even as we take this day of celebration. For those who are not Black, we invite you to pledge solidarity with the understanding that reparations is a core moral, ethical, and legal principle that must be applied to the stolen labor and lives of African people. Support reparations and make financial contributions to Black-led organizations that are doing this vital work. Reparations is a debt that is owed to Black people and must be paid in order to stabilize the nation and advance together.

Dr. West and I are committed to making reparations real. We are grateful to contemporary reparations activists and organizations and applaud locales and states that are building their own reparations policies as first steps. As Black people rightfully celebrate this day of Jubilee, we also commit to the continued work of Black freedom that only comes with reparations.

In Truth, Justice, and Love,

Melina Abdullah

Great-great-great granddaughter of Rachel…a free African woman who was stolen, chained, bound, and imported as chattel into Sabine Pass, Texas

And Independent Candidate for Vice President of the United States