YOUNG HISTORIA BLOGS

Looking back at history and the education system in this country, many Americans think of slavery as a distant period of history. They often view slavery as an issue settled long ago. Juneteenth challenges this belief. Although Juneteenth has been celebrated since 1865, the federal government did not officially recognize it as a national holiday until 2021. This created a gap of 156 years before America formally recognized one of the most important events in its history.

The beginning of Juneteenth happened on this very day of June 19, 1865, when Union troops arrived in Galveston, Texas and informed more than 250,000 enslaved Black people they were free. This announcement came more than two years after President Abraham Lincoln signed the Emancipation Proclamation in January 1863. According to the National Museum of African American History and Culture, more than 250,000 enslaved Black people in Texas remained in bondage until Union General Gordon Granger and roughly 2,000 troops entered Galveston and announced their freedom. Despite the long gap without federal recognition, Black communities continued to celebrate through family gatherings, church events, festivals, and community organizations.

The path to federal recognition wasn’t easy either. Activists spent decades pushing lawmakers and educating the public. According to the National Museum of African American History and Culture, Rev. Ronald V. Myers Sr. dedicated more than twenty years to lobbying elected officials and promoting Juneteenth recognition across the country. Another major figure was Opal Lee, often called the “Grandmother of Juneteenth”. In 2016, at eighty-nine years old, Lee began walking to raise awareness for the cause. She walked two and a half miles to symbolize the two and a half years Black Texans remained enslaved after the Emancipation Proclamation. Over time, her movement attracted supporters across the country and gathered more than 1.5 million signatures.

Even after decades of advocacy, federal recognition arrived only after a national conversation about race. Following the deaths of George Floyd and Breonna Taylor in 2020, millions of Americans participated in protests and discussions about racial justice. Public attention turned toward issues that Black communities had raised for generations. One year later, President Joe Biden signed legislation making Juneteenth a federal holiday.

Some might say that making Juneteenth a federal holiday still doesn’t solve or erase discrimination. While this is true and federal recognition does not erase discrimination, the argument overlooks why the holiday matters. Recognition acknowledges a history that many Americans were never taught in school. In addition, it supports and honors the activists who fought to make Juneteenth a federal holiday, especially those who preserved the celebration long before the federal government recognized it.

This brings me to my side of the argument. I believe the story behind Juneteenth’s federal recognition reveals how recent many struggles for racial equality still are. The holiday commemorates freedom in 1865, yet the nation waited until 2021 to formally recognize it. Juneteenth is a reminder that recognition, equality, and historical memory often require generations of perseverance before they receive national attention.

References:

Lee, Chantelle. “What Is Juneteenth and How Did It Become a Federal Holiday?” TIME, Time, 19 June 2026, time.com/article/2026/06/19/juneteenth-federal-holiday-history/. Accessed 19 June 2026.

Muhammad, Mariyam, and Alex Perry. “When Did Juneteenth Become a Federal Holiday? Do You Get a Day off Work?” The Enquirer, Cincinnati Enquirer, 18 June 2026, www.cincinnati.com/story/news/2026/06/18/juneteenth-become-federal-holiday-origins-date-day-off-work/90602950007/. Accessed 19 June 2026.

Nix, Elizabeth. “What Is Juneteenth? | HISTORY.” HISTORY, 19 June 2015, www.history.com/articles/what-is-juneteenth.

“Our American Story - Juneteenth.” National Museum of African American History and Culture, nmaahc.si.edu/explore/stories/our-american-story-juneteenth.

Vaughan, Ashley. ““Grandmother of Juneteenth” Celebrates Federal Holiday – but There Is More Work to Do. Here’s How You Can Help.” CNN, 17 June 2021, www.cnn.com/2021/06/17/us/iyw-juneteenth-activist-opal-lee/index.html. Accessed 19 June 2026.

In the year of 1951, Henrietta Lacks arrived at Johns Hopkins Hospital seeking treatment for cervical cancer. During this time, she was a 31 year old Black mother of five. During her treatment, doctors at JHH took samples of her cancer cells without her knowledge or consent. Later on, her cells would become known as the HeLa cell line; the first human cells able to survive and reproduce indefinitely in a laboratory. To this day, HeLa cells are one of the most important cell lines remaining in medical research. However, Henrietta Lacks' family received little to no recognition, no compensation, and limited access to healthcare while universities, research centers/corporations benefited. Her story demonstrates the core example of patients, especially Black women patients, who are part of the many denied rights. 

The medical impact that HeLa cells had is extremely not easy to overlook. According to John Hopkins Medicine, HeLa cells helped researchers develop the polio vaccine, study cancer, examine the effects of radiation, contribute to research on diseases ranging from HIV to COVID-19, and study the human genome. In today's research and news publications, it can be seen that more than 11,000 scientific publications have relied on the cells of Henrietta Lacks. In addition, three different Nobel prize winning discoveries involved research using her cells; demonstrating how impactful Henrietta Lacks cells are to modern medicine.  

Yet, the injustice covered by the profit from modern medicine did not simply end after her death in 1951. Henrietta Lacks' family often struggled to access healthcare themselves. Medical News Today says the HeLa industry is just another example of the United States profiting from Black bodies while offering little to no return. The crazier part of this story is that decades passed before the Lacks family learned Henrietta’s cells were being used worldwide. By then, researchers and companies had already built careers, patents, and profits from cells taken without permission. 

Some argue that doctors didn’t break the rules and that John Hopkins never sold her cells for profit. This doesn’t justify the larger issue. A healthcare system benefited from Henrietta Lacks while neither she nor her family shared in those benefits. As bioethicist Jennifer Bard argues, the legal system spent decades treating the case as closed, even as companies continued profiting from HeLa cells. Recent lawsuits and settlements suggest that many people still believe in the unjustified actions done by Johns Hopkins Hospital doctors and the debt that needs to be repaid. 

This shifts me to my side of the argument. I believe Henrietta Lacks story is not just about medical ethics being broken. It is about a larger pattern of racial injustice in this country. Her experience shows how Black Americans have often been denied the same rights, respect, and opportunities as others. While a lot has changed since 1951, inequalities in healthcare and social treatment continue to affect communities of color today, making her story as relevant now as it was seventy-five years ago. 

References:

“Blog - Updating the Canon: The Story of Henrietta Lacks Is Not over - Bioethics Today.” Bioethics Today, 30 Mar. 2026, bioethicstoday.org/blog/updating-the-canon-the-story-of-henrietta-lacks-is-not-over/.

Johns Hopkins Medicine. “The Legacy of Henrietta Lacks.” Www.hopkinsmedicine.org, 2025, www.hopkinsmedicine.org/henrietta-lacks.

Lang, Katharine. “The Story of Henrietta Lacks and the Uniqueness of HeLa Cells.” Www.medicalnewstoday.com, 18 Oct. 2022, www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/the-stolen-cells-of-henrietta-lacks-and-their-ongoing-contribution-to-science.

“The Story of Henrietta Lacks: Medical Ethics and Systemic Racism.” Www.labxchange.org, 11 Apr. 2024, www.labxchange.org/library/items/lb:LabXchange:f1273d17:html:1.

When many people with little education about Africa’s struggles offer opinions on its political structure, ethnic conflict, and economic dependence, they are quick to make assumptions. This explanation ignores the history behind Africa’s modern state. Many of the challenges facing African countries today trace back to European colonialism. European powers imposed political systems and reorganized economies around their own interests, for power and control.

The Berlin Conference of 1884-1885 serves as the foundational explanation for the story. European leaders met in Berlin, and this would result in dividing Africa among themselves without inviting a single African representative into the conversation. According to Rwigema Pierre Celestin, the conference created borders that ignored existing ethnic, political, and cultural communities. Out of this conference, many families and groups found themselves being separated by international borders. This single hand decision often traces back to modern day ethnic tensions.

George P. Hagan argues that independence did not remove the problems faced by African countries. New African governments inherited states made up of different ethnic groups under a single nation. Leaders faced heavy struggles in creating unity between such diverse groups while still upholding different cultural and regional differences.

Colonialism also reshaped African economies. European powers built colonial economies around the extraction of raw materials such as gold, rubber, cocoa, and different types of minerals. This would greatly support European industries, resulting in a greater creation of European goods. This shows that Europe mainly organized and managed African countries for their raw goods to serve the mother country, not local needs. This demonstrates to this day, many African countries still rely heavily on exporting raw materials while importing manufactured goods.

Some people argue that colonialism brought different infrastructures to Africa such as roads, schools, and modern institutions. Although this may be true, colonial governments built this infrastructure to move resources from Africa to Europe. They did not design these systems to create independence and for the good of African states.

This lands me on my side of the argument. I determinedly believe colonialism harmed Africa. European powers did not colonize Africa to improve the lives of African people. They sought land, labor, resources, and profit. Before colonial rule, Africa contained prosperous kingdoms, expansive trading networks, established systems of government, rich cultures, and valuable natural resources. Walter Rodney argues that colonialism redirected African development toward European interests rather than African prosperity. Many people today point to poverty or under development in Africa without understanding the history behind those conditions. Those problems occurred due to colonial powers; evil ruling of reshaping African economies, dividing communities, and weakening existing institutions. So, next time assumptions are made about Africa, be educated on its history, what colonialism took away, and how those extensive changes affected the continent.

References:

Apata, Gabriel. “Review: Walter Rodney, “How Europe Underdeveloped Africa.”” Theory, Culture & Society | Global Public Life, 29 Sept. 2022, www.theoryculturesociety.org/blog/review-walter-rodney-how-europe-underdeveloped-africa.

Diego, Gideon. “The Invention of Africa - Exploring the Myths and Ideas That Invented a Continent in v Y Mudimbe’s Magnum Opus | Gideon Diego.” Gideondiego.com, 4 Oct. 2024, www.gideondiego.com/2079145_the-invention-of-africa-exploring-the-myths-and-ideas-that-invented-a-continent-in-v-y-mudimbe-s-magnum-opus.

Hagan, George P. “European Colonialism and the Roots of the Systemic Challenges of African States.” Pass.va, 2024, www.pass.va/en/publications/studia-selecta/studia_selecta_10_pass/hagan.html.

Hon Rwigema, and Pierre Celestin. “Impact of the Berlin Conference (1884 -1885) on EAC Development: 140 Years after the Divide of Africa.” The Review Review, 1 Jan. 2025, pp. 2012–2022, www.researchgate.net/publication/390299729_Impact_of_the_berlin_conference_1884_-1885_on_EAC_development_140_years_after_the_divide_of_Africa.

Most Americans cannot tell you who Dr. Pauli Murray is, which is an issue. Murray was a poet, lawyer, activist, organizer, and Episcopal priest. According to the National Women's History Museum, she was "directly involved in, and helped articulate, the intellectual foundations of two of the most important social justice movements of the twentieth century." Her work impacted civil rights, women's rights, and religious history. She was involved in everything. Yet, she was left out of the U.S. history told to the youth across the country.

Murray was born in Baltimore in 1910 and lost her mother young. Her mother died from a cerebral hemorrhage, and her father was later beaten to death by a white guard at a mental institution. According to the Pauli Murray Center, William Murray "was eventually confined to Crownsville State Hospital where he was later murdered by a white guard in 1923." Despite these challenges, Murray excelled in school, graduating high school at fifteen and earning degrees from Hunter College, Howard Law School, UC Berkeley, and Yale. At each institution, something stood in her way. Columbia did not admit women. Harvard rejected her despite a letter of recommendation from President Roosevelt. UNC turned her away because of her race. As a result, Murray eventually struck the term "Jane Crow" to describe facing discrimination based on both race and gender at the same time.

Nevertheless, Murray kept pushing forward. At Howard Law School, she wrote a paper arguing that the "separate but equal" principle was unconstitutional, an argument that, according to the National Women's History Museum, "eventually formed the basis for the Brown vs. Board of Education (1954) case." In addition, Thurgood Marshall kept copies of Murray's 1951 book States' Laws on Race and Color at the NAACP office and, according to the Pauli Murray Center, described it as the "Bible" for civil rights litigators. Furthermore, Ruth Bader Ginsburg later used Murray's legal framework to argue that the Equal Protection Clause applied to sex discrimination.

What also gets overlooked is that Murray was active long before these moments became celebrated in history. For instance, according to the National Organization for Women, she refused to move to the back of a bus in Petersburg, Virginia, fifteen years before Rosa Parks, and organized restaurant sit-ins in Washington D.C. twenty years before the Greensboro sit-ins. Murray was also one of the twelve founders of the National Organization for Women in 1966, though she eventually left because, as the Pauli Murray Center notes, she "did not believe that NOW appropriately addressed the issues of Black and working-class women."

In 1977, Murray became the first Black woman ordained as an Episcopal priest. She performed her first Eucharist at the same chapel in North Carolina where her enslaved grandmother had been baptized. As the National Women's History Museum describes it, the church was "steps away from UNC's campus, a school that had denied Murray entry based on their race." Evidently, that detail alone shows how far Murray had come and how much that moment meant.

At last, Murray died in 1985. The Episcopal Church named her a saint in 2012. Yale named a residential college after her. Her childhood home in Durham is now a National Historic Landmark. The recognition came late, but eventually did come. As D.C. Delegate Eleanor Holmes Norton noted in the introduction to Murray's autobiography, Murray never lived in the past but rather "decades ahead of her time, seeming to pull history along with her."

References:

National Organization for Women. “Finding Pauli Murray.” National Organization for Women, 24 Oct. 2016, now.org/about/history/finding-pauli-murray/.

Pauli Murray Center. “Who Is Pauli Murray?” Pauli Murray Center, www.paulimurraycenter.com/who-is-pauli.

“Pauli Murray.” National Women’s History Museum, 2021. Date accessed. Chicago – “Pauli Murray.” National Women’s History Museum. 2021. www.womenshistory.org/education-resources/biographies/pauli-murray.

Columbus gets a lot of credit for his courage in sailing into unknown waters and finding a new world, so much so that we give him a federal holiday every October. But when you actually look at the history, what are we really celebrating? Columbus was not a hero. He was responsible for one of the worst genocides in human history.

To begin with, Columbus never actually discovered land that was already home to millions of indigenous people. Professor Leo Killsback from ASU points out that Columbus never even stepped foot on what is now the United States, and he went to his grave thinking he had landed in the East Indies, which is on the complete other side of the world. The story taught to Americans since they were kids was never fully true.

What Columbus actually did is written down in his own journals. He enslaved the Arawak people, forced them into gold mines, and when they did not meet their quotas he had them violently punished and dismembered. Two days after landing he was already writing to the Spanish monarchs saying fifty men could take control of the entire native population. That is not how an explorer thinks.

The population numbers alone tell the story. Around 250,000 natives lived on the island when Columbus arrived in 1492. By 1550 that number was 500. By 1650 there were none left. Historian Edward T. Stone used Columbus' own letters and the writings of Father Bartolomé de Las Casas to show that Columbus built the slave trade in the New World himself, going directly against orders from the Spanish crown to do it.

Some historians argue Columbus could not have intended genocide because he needed the natives as workers. But intent does not change what actually happened. Even historians who avoid the word genocide admit Columbus opened the door to mass killings across the New World. Debating what he meant while ignoring who died is something only people with no personal tie to that history can afford to do.

Keeping Columbus Day as a federal holiday tells indigenous people that their destruction is worth celebrating. States, cities, and universities across the country have already switched to Indigenous Peoples Day. That is not rewriting history. That is being honest about it.

References:

Musseau, François. “Did Christopher Columbus Commit Genocide?” JusticeInfo.net, 3 Jan. 2019, www.justiceinfo.net/en/39904-did-christopher-columbus-commit-genocide.html.

Posts by gregory.423gregory.423. “Christopher Columbus, Hero or Villain? | Christopher Columbus: Hero or Villain?” Osu.edu, 2025, u.osu.edu/columbusannotatedbibliography/christopher-columbus-was-a-horrific-villain/christopher-columbus-hero-or-villain/.

Stone, Edward T. “Columbus and Genocide | AMERICAN HERITAGE.” Americanheritage.com, 2019, www.americanheritage.com/columbus-and-genocide.

Terrill, Marshall. “Celebrating Columbus Continues to Be Controversial.” ASU News, 7 Oct. 2018, news.asu.edu/20181007-discoveries-continuing-columbus-controversy.