On Juneteenth
by Annette Gordon-Reed
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Pub Date 4 May 2021 | Archive Date 30 Apr 2021
W. W. Norton & Company | Liveright
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Description
A brief overview of Juneteenth’s integral importance to American history—told by the Pulitzer Prize–winning historian and Texas native.
Interweaving American history, dramatic family chronicle, and searing episodes of memoir, Annette Gordon-Reed, the descendant of enslaved people brought to Texas in the 1850s, recounts the origins of Juneteenth and explores the legacies of the holiday that remain with us.
From the earliest presence of black people in Texas—in the 1500s, well before enslaved Africans arrived in Jamestown—to the day in Galveston on June 19, 1865, when General Gordon Granger announced the end of slavery, Gordon-Reed’s insightful and inspiring essays present the saga of a “frontier” peopled by Native Americans, Anglos, Tejanos, and Blacks that became a slaveholder’s republic. Reworking the “Alamo” framework, Gordon-Reed shows that the slave-and race-based economy not only defined this fractious era of Texas independence, but precipitated the Mexican-American War and the resulting Civil War. A commemoration of Juneteenth and the fraught legacies of slavery that still persist, On Juneteenth is stark reminder that the fight for equality is ongoing.
About the Author:
Annette Gordon-Reed is the Carl M. Loeb University Professor at Harvard University. The author of Pulitzer Prize-winning The Hemingses of Monticello, she lives in New York and Cambridge.
Available Editions
| EDITION | Hardcover |
| ISBN | 9781631498831 |
| PRICE | US$15.95 (USD) |
Featured Reviews
Rebecca Brenner G, Educator
newest – slightly more personal book – by Harvard law professor Annette Gordon-Reed, whose scholarship on Sally Hemings and Thomas Jefferson revolutionized early American historiography. Gordon-Reed was born and raised in Texas, where her family descended from enslaved persons, celebrated Juneteenth annually, and endured the Jim Crow segregated South. As a recent New York Times book review recounts, Gordon-Reed herself helped to integrate schools racially in her hometown. This new book integrates the author’s intersectional perspective with a long history of marking the abolishment of enslavement in the Lone Star State
Noelle M, Reviewer
eARC NetGalley review
On Juneteenth is a short collection of powerful essays on the history of Texas and what it means to be Black in America. Gordon-Reed recounts her own experiences being a young Black girl in Texas through out these chapters and how when looking back at her childhood history classes, some information was romanticized or left out of the classrooms completely.
This book is overflowing with information in an easy-to-read prose. Although I'm far from an expert, I now feel more comfortable speaking about Texas' history, segregation/integration, and early explorers like Cabeza de Vaca and Estebanico.
I recommend this book to everyone. Unless you're a scholar of early American and Texan history, this book is a must read.
Thank you to the author, W. W. Norton & Company, and NetGalley for a copy of this eARC in exchange for an honest review.
Gabby W, Librarian
Review:
This book reminded me of why Annette Gordon-Reed is one of my favorite Historians. She brings herself into the narrative only when it serves the context of the work and does so in a way that is so authentic and comforting. Juneteenth is more than a freedom holiday to her and many other Black Texans. It's about celebrating legacy and family as well as acknowledging that time has not healed all wounds.
Within this short book, Gordon-Reed takes the reader through a short history of Texas and Galveston, how Africans came to be in Texas and contemplates the way this History is remembered or not. She explains the ways in which she and her family are connected to the history of Black folks in Texas as Gordon-Reed desegregated her local school. All of this culminating into the circumstances of Juneteenth and how it is celebrated today in Texas.
This work feels personal and I'm grateful for it.
Verdict:
I highly recommend this book to everyone from high school and up. On Juneteenth could also work for middle and elementary schools if the educator takes sections for reviewing with students.
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