In Observance of Juneteenth 2023
Dear Howard University Community,
The Juneteenth holiday is unquestionably central to the American story. Exactly 900 days after President Abraham Lincoln signed the Emancipation Proclamation, ostensibly terminating the American chattel slavery system, the decree finally reached Galveston, Texas, freeing the more than 250,000 Black people still enslaved across the state.
Historical moments like these make excruciatingly clear the dichotomies that have persisted throughout our nation’s history. While these final emancipations deserve to be celebrated, the elation surrounding the holiday somewhat discounts the fact that nine hundred days elapsed after President Lincoln’s executive order before they occurred. Days, months, and years of self-determination were withheld from hundreds of thousands of human beings who remained in captivity long after their emancipation, even as the 13th Amendment passed through the chambers of the United States Congress – mere miles from where our beloved institution stands today.
In so many ways, Juneteenth is the perfect encapsulation of both our country’s infinite potential and its entrenched reality: how democracy and liberation have repeatedly been juxtaposed against disappointing national dialogues regarding who deserves which rights and why. Far too often, we view the promise of America as a zero-sum game, where one person or group’s success determines another’s failure. As a University, as a country, and as individuals, it is our duty to reject that notion and reimagine a future that is simultaneously more equal and equitable for us all. I am proud of the role Howard University continues to play in these efforts, just as I am impressed by the strides we continue to make as a society, often with this generation at the fore.
In observance of the Juneteenth holiday, the University will be closed today, Monday, June 19, and will reopen Tuesday, June 20, 2023.
Renewed attacks on our constitutional rights serve to remind us that our work is far from complete, and I hope we each use this time off to reflect on how we can leave this world much better than we entered it. Juneteenth should be an annual remembrance of how rights have been historically apportioned unevenly, and our continued responsibility to ensure the American ideals of liberty and justice for all.
Excellence in Truth and Service,
Wayne A. I. Frederick, M.D., MBA
Charles R. Drew Professor of Surgery
President