Although there are undoubtedly differences between the Virginia Native people of today the the Virginia Native people of the 1600s, this is still good practice for anthropologists and historians -- they still have a better connection to the cultures and traditions, and can help point out glaring inaccuracies. It's a wonder Disney didn't do this with their film.

This is a good point about the fallibility of archives and how once information and memory is lost, there will always be gaps in the historical record that obfuscate the reality of what happened.

Something I've always found particularly distasteful about this film is that, unlike how she is portrayed in the movie, shoe would have been nine years old during the time that the movie takes place.

In addition the the other points being made about this being a a beautiful way of weaving together the different strands of both Texas history and the author's own family history, the use of food to demonstrate history and syncretism across time is amazing. It reminds me of the historical work being done by the Southern Foodways Alliance at the University of Mississippi -- they research Southern history through the lens of food and actually produced a short film about Juneteenth in 2019!

Succinct and biting commentary against one of the worst schools of historic thought.

Fascinating that such a monumental moment in the lives of many people is recorded so poorly -- the fragility and fracturing of memory over time is strange to think about.

The idea that Juneteenth celebrations are "performances of memory" is interesting to me-- it makes me wonder how the performance of memory has changed over time, especially as we get further away from the celebration's inception. How was a 1900 Juneteenth celebration different from a 2023 one? Is one more "authentic" or (to use the author's word) "mature" than another, or do they just reflect the time and place that they happened in?

Someone else noted that how long it took people to find out about emancipation seems surprising now, given how readily available information is in the modern day. Seeing it put like this, however, with people in Tennessee learning about something as groundbreaking as their own emancipation four months after people in Mississippi, really drove that sentiment home for me.

While I don't think they're from this project specifically, I've listened to the recordings from the 1930s of oral histories from former enslaved people on the Library of Congress website. Incredibly harrowing stuff, but a valuable resource for historians and really anyone to actually get a sense of what life was like for enslaved people, in their own words.

I'm curious as to why this is - it seems that every other instance of uplift and protest by Black people in the South at this time was met with violence or scorn, so I wonder what characteristics of these celebrations made it so that Juneteenth was able to be a bright spot/moment of reprieve?

The inclusion of Gandhi and King here seems especially egregious here given Apple's exploitation of labor in the global South.

Interesting that similar sentiments are not usually expressed about Columbus day or Presidents' day.

This makes it clear that the opposition to MLK day's designation as a federal holiday, at least in South Carolina, was racially motivated - why else would it stand in opposition to "Confederate holidays"?

It seems like MLK day was a de facto holiday long before being signed into law by Reagan - what changed between Carter's failed initiative to offcialize MLK day and the successful one in 1983?

I found the fact that Reagan, however reluctantly, was the one to sign MLK day into law particularly surprising, given what I know about him and the climate of reactionary conservatism he presided over.