What Juneteenth can tell us about the value of Black life in America

Juneteenth has taken on a symbolic national reverence as the day news of the Emancipation Proclamation finally reached Texas, but, in reality, the emancipation proclamation didn’t end slavery, and neither did the civil war. Reporter Nicole Ellis revisits Galveston, Tex., where Gen. Gordon Granger delivered an order that emancipated 250,000 enslaved people on June 19, 1865. Granger clarifying words on the value of Black life in America distinguishes Juneteenth as emancipation day. But our ability to live up to that ideal as a nation is best measured in the days, weeks and years that followed.