Corporations — About Juneteenth: Stop, Reflect and Cut Some Checks

Please stop trying to profit off Black pain and resilience considering this country’s history and present resistance to our freedom

From BRIC Arts Media: Juneteenth Then and Now Event

Dear American Corporations:

Juneteenth is the celebration of the last group of enslaved Africans freed in Texas two years after the Emancipation Proclamation. Please let that sink in for a minute. This should be a time for reflection and correction of any bias, discrimination, or organizational inequities and disparities — in pay, policies, and partnerships — not a sales campaign.

This country made a national holiday to celebrate freeing the last (250,000 approx.) enslaved African men, women, and children who were forced to WORK FOR FREE, like animals, and helped build generational wealth for racist white people who thought it was their God-given right to beat, maim, rape, kill and sometimes breed African people for profit and fun.

Yet, many companies don’t recognize the holiday as a paid day off and laws have been passed NOT to teach about America’s history of slavery. When it was enslaved Africans that provided the free labor that built the wealth of the “The South” and some northern states like Maine, Massachusets, Vermont, and Rhode Island. New Jersey was the last northern state to free slaves in 1866 and New York greatly profited from the free labor and trade of enslaved Africans. New York-based companies like New York Life, AIG, and Aetna insured enslaved Africans as property like cattle. Bank of America and JP Morgan chase mortgaged and provided loans using enslaved Africans as collateral.

Racial and domestic terrorism is at an all-time high — we’re getting killed in grocery stores and in our churches.

Black people still don’t have equal pay and home ownership is at an all-time low.

Black people are facing high birth and Covid mortality rates due to healthcare bias and discrimination.

Enslaved Africans (and Indigenous First Nations) provided free labor and expert planting and agrarian knowledge and expertise on planting and harvesting tobacco, rice, cotton, and sugar and now less than 2% of American farmers are…