Celebrating Juneteenth – Continuing Our Movement

By Florencia Greer Polite, MD 

Today Friday, June 19, marks Juneteenth - a commemoration of the “freedom” of all people living in the United States.

The history of slavery in the United States is a complicated one and very much impacts the current predicament we find ourselves in.  Interestingly, Juneteenth relates back to Abraham Lincoln and the conversation that I had with my daughter Lena about the abolition of slavery. 

In the history of the slave trade to the New World, according to the Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade Database, 12.5 million Africans were shipped to the New World. 10.7 million Africans survived the dreaded Middle Passage, disembarking in North America, the Caribbean and South America.  While less than 400,000 of those slaves arrived in America, by…