By Shelley Bradford Bell, Chair Democrats Abroad France Paris, and Co-Chair of Black Caucus France

“Out of the huts of history’s shame, . . .Up from a past that’s rooted in pain. . . Bringing the gifts that my ancestors gave, I am the dream and the hope of the slave. I rise, I rise, I rise.”

Excerpted from Still I Rise, by Maya Angelou

On the evening of December 31, 1862, enslaved Africans gathered in lean-to churches, made of dirt floors, handmade benches, and walls that whispered the sound of the wind as it blew through the cracks of uneven planks. It’s the night known as Freedom’s Eve. It was the night the enslaved waited for freedom. Waiting to hear the Emancipation Proclamation would take effect on January 1, 1863, and set them free.

We prayed. We sang. We hoped. And as midnight approached - we waited for freedom.

For generations, enslaved people had prayed for this moment. Mothers whispered the dream of freedom to their children. Fathers taught their sons they were men, not slaves and one day they would be free men. Grandparents prayed for the day of freedom to arrive in their lifetime. For nearly 300 years, enslaved people carried the hope and the dream that one day we would be free. And on that New Year’s Day in 1863, many believed it finally had.

Imagine the joy that filled those churches when word arrived. Imagine the tears. Imagine the embraces, the whoops and shouting of hallelujah! Imagine generations of prayers answered in what one hoped to be a single moment.

Now imagine another place, not a church but a plantation in what at that time was the farthest reaches of American territory. Imagine Galveston, Texas. This was not a church filled with hopeful, enslaved men, women, and children. This was a place where the very thought of the possibility was never shared with them. A place where the existence of the Emancipation Proclamation was never shared. A place where in the morning they would rise from slumber and begin another day of grueling labor on the same plantations; in the same fields; with the same overseers; and in the same chains.

The news never reached them because it had been withheld from them. For more than two years, they continued living in bondage when legally they were free. They were never told freedom had been declared. That is the tragedy at the heart of Juneteenth.

However, Texas was the last confederate state but not the only one who withheld freedom. As the Union rode across the southern states to enforce the law, only then were the enslaved informed we were free. Mississippi in July 1863, Georgia in September 1864, Virginia, in April 1865. The emancipation Proclamation was ignored and slavery continued and many plantation owners moved toward Texas to evade the Union.

Freedom existed. But knowledge of that freedom did not because people who do not know they are free are easily kept in chains. It is the basis for all that is currently happening to destroy, dismantle, and delete not only the history of African Americans, but Democracy itself.

America declared its independence on July 4, 1776, but freedom for African Americans, was still 89 years away. For 89 years after the words "We the People" were written, millions of Black men, women, and children remained enslaved. We were not included in the promise. We weren’t seen as human beings; we were viewed as property.

While the notion of freedom finally arrived in Texas on June 19, 1865, the struggle for equality and inclusion had only just begun.

Former Confederate states quickly enacted Black Codes, laws designed to restrict where formerly enslaved people could work, live, travel, gather, and build economic independence. When those systems were challenged and finally defeated, Reconstruction fought to right history as it fought against decades of Jim Crow segregation.

Reconstruction is often an overlooked chapter in American history because it worked to create change while Jim Crow laws sought to defeat them. It was an imperfect effort, but an effort nonetheless, to transform the lives of the formerly enslaved. It was imperfect, contested, and met with fierce resistance. It revealed what was possible when unity and equality were allowed to exist and become a lived reality.

We struggled during Reconstruction, through Jim Crow, and the unrelenting battle we fought through the Civil Rights Movement and still fight today. African American soldiers fought in wars for an America that did not see them as people. And when France honored the Black soldiers with the Croix de Guerre after World War I, America responded with lynchings. Black soldiers were not allowed to March in the military parades that followed, so we recognized our heroes with a parade of our own in Harlem.

The recognition of Juneteenth is not simply that slavery ended. It is a reminder that every advance we make toward equality is still met with violence and efforts to limit it, delay it, redefine it, or simply take it away. Even though Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and others fought for the creation of the Voters Rights Act of 1965, it has now been gutted by a right-leaning Supreme Court. The implications of which are not only affecting the African American vote, but the vote of Democrats in general.

Hold in your mind the three civil rights workers murdered during Freedom Summer in 1964. James Chaney an African American, along with Andrew Goodman and Michael Schwerner two young white men, were working in Mississippi to help register Black voters and support civil rights during the Freedom Summer campaign. On June 21, 1964, they were arrested, released, then ambushed and murdered by Ku Klux Klan who were working with local law enforcement. A massive search found them buried in an earthen dam on a farm in Mississippi. It is known as one of the most notorious civil rights crimes in American history. But it also sent a message to supporters of the Civil Rights movement that they would be punished alongside us. It is still done today.

That lesson should concern every American today. Across the country, we are witnessing battles over history, education, voting rights, representation, and who gets to be recorded in the American story. We are seeing media designed to withhold rather than share important news, stories shaped to persuade that immigrants and people of color are the true enemy.

The opening of the Obama Presidential Center on Juneteenth pays homage to our history and a commitment to our united future. Located on the South Side of Chicago, in the historic heart of its African American community, it is more than a presidential library. It is a place dedicated to democracy, leadership, civic engagement, education, and community building. It is the embodiment of the belief that democracy grows stronger when people are equipped with the knowledge, opportunity, and responsibility to participate fully in public life.

We are seeing attempts to narrow our understanding of the past and, in doing so, narrow our vision of the future. History teaches us that when truth becomes selective, freedom becomes fragile. Systems of power rarely survive by convincing everyone they are equal. They survive by convincing people that they are separate. This is the playbook we are seeing today.

For generations, Americans have been encouraged to see one another through categories: Black and White, immigrant and citizen, male and female, urban and rural, gay and straight, Christian and non-Christian, native-born and newcomer.

The more divided we become, the easier we are to manipulate, distract, and silence. This is why the attacks on diversity, equity, and inclusion should be fought by all Americans. Despite the political rhetoric surrounding DEI, its purpose was never to give African Americans an unfair advantage. Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion is not about division. It is about unity. It is about all Americans embracing the knowledge that our futures are interconnected.

The effort to dismantle DEI, Voting Rights, Affirmative Action, and other initiatives always framed as a correction of unfair advantages given to minorities. But the deeper consequence has been the weakening of the fragile threads that connect us to one another. When people are convinced that racial justice benefits only Black people, they don’t see it as their fight. When people are convinced that immigrant rights matter only to immigrants, they forget their own history. When people are convinced that attacks on women's rights and women’s health affect only women, they don’t emotionally invest. When people are convinced that special education affects only families with disabled children, they don’t see it as their problem to address.

That is how freedom is lost. That is how democracy is lost.

Because democracy does not collapse all at once. It erodes when citizens begin believing that the struggles of others have nothing to do with them, when the truth is the opposite. What happens to African Americans happens to America. What happens to immigrants happens to America. What happens to Latinos happens to America. What happens to people with disabilities affects America.

What happens to any community whose voice is diminished and whose freedoms are taken, ultimately affects us all. There are no separate agendas. There is only one agenda: whether we will continue building a democracy that includes everyone or retreat into a culture of exclusion that serves only a few.

When history is removed from classrooms, we all lose knowledge and understanding. When voting rights are weakened, we all lose representation. When any community is pushed to the margins, democracy itself is diminished.

As Democrats, we must also be honest with ourselves. It is easy to condemn prejudice when it comes from our political opponents. It is harder to confront it when it exists within our own institutions, organizations, and communities.

The Democratic Party has long been the political home for those seeking justice, equality, and opportunity. But a commitment to equality is not a destination, it is a practice.

We cannot fight racism while ignoring racism in our own spaces. We cannot advocate for women's rights while dismissing women's leadership. We cannot defend immigrants while remaining silent when xenophobia emerges among our allies. We cannot champion diversity if we are unwilling to share power.

We cannot ask America to become a more inclusive democracy if we are unwilling to do the work ourselves. The work of democracy begins with the courage to examine our own assumptions and challenge our own biases. We become the model for and champions of diversity, equity, and inclusion. We become the framework for democracy. This work is never finished.

The institution of slavery has been abolished, but the struggle for African Americans blazes on.

Juneteenth reminds us that the strategies of hundreds of years ago are still very much in play. But we still sing, we still pray, we still fight and we still dream.

"Nobody's free until everybody's free."
— Fannie Lou Hamer