This Juneteenth, I invite us to imagine how two women’s journeys — both beginning in hardship — could lead to such different legacies for their descendants.
Picture a white woman who arrived in colonial America as an indentured servant. After several years of hard labor, she might have earned her freedom under contract. She might have gone on to claim land, marry into a farming family, or taken work as a nanny or seamstress. Over generations, her family would have an opportunity to build wealth — passing down property, growing businesses, and accumulating savings that would open doors to education, homeownership, and entrepreneurship.
Now picture a Black woman kidnapped from Africa and sold into slavery. She was forced to labor for life, and her children were born into bondage. Even after slavery officially ended, freedom was delayed for many of her descendants. It took until June 19, 1865 — Juneteenth — for Union troops to reach Texas and enforce emancipation, nearly two and a half years after the Emancipation Proclamation.
When Black Americans began to build lives as free people, they were promised “40 acres and a mule” — a promise that the U.S. government quickly abandoned. Those who managed to save and invest placed their trust in the Freedman’s Savings Bank, established by Congress and overseen by white managers. Those managers made risky loans to white businesses and speculators, leading to the bank’s collapse and the loss of nearly $3 million in Black depositors’ savings — wealth that could have seeded futures.
And when Black communities like Tulsa’s Greenwood District — known as Black Wall Street — built prosperity through their own businesses, homes, and institutions, white mobs, aided by local authorities, burned them to the ground in 1921. Insurance claims were denied, and survivors received no compensation.
Decades of redlining, disinvestment, and urban renewal programs demolished or devalued other thriving Black neighborhoods.
Today, those divergent paths still echo. Generational wealth, property, and networks often make the difference in who can take entrepreneurial risks, fund an education, or access capital.
This Juneteenth we pause to mark freedom’s arrival. Tomorrow, we continue the work.
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