What Juneteenth Means to Me

By Aneta Thomas Lee, Visiting Assistant Director for Digital Equity, Inclusion, and Navigation, Illinois Broadband Lab; and consultant for EveryoneOn

When I am asked where I am from, I sometimes say I am from Metro Atlanta, Georgia via New Orleans. 

My maternal grandmother and grandfather are from Mobile, Alabama and New Orleans, Louisiana where my mother was born. My grandmother— Edrice

Grooms Thomas—is in my opinion, an unsung Black history icon in Ascension Parish, Louisiana. She advocated for and supported the community, sometimes “illegally.” The first Sunday after the Civil Rights Acts of 1964 was passed, she boldly marched her 10 children to the front pew of her Catholic church during mass, finally able to exercise her human rights.

She instilled that boldness in her children. As they built their lives and families across the South and Midwest, those children challenged racial barriers by obtaining careers in telecommunications, banking and government. One of those children—my mother’s fraternal twin—established her life in Houston, Texas after becoming a lawyer. She lived there with her husband and five girls.

My mother and her sister brought their families together almost every summer. It was usually my aunt driving her family to New Orleans at first and eventually to Georgia once my family moved to the Atlanta area in 1988. 

During one of those visits in the summer in 1990, my aunt was curious if the City of Atlanta had any Juneteenth celebratory events. “Juneteenth? What is that?” I asked. My aunt was shocked I had no idea what it was, being that we were living in the bedrock of the Civil Rights movement.

When my aunt explained the significance of the date, I was mortified to learn its history and that there were people who actually wanted slavery to continue. Really?? 

In an effort to ease my young mind from the atrocities of this new knowledge, I resigned myself to believing that Juneteenth was a “Texas” thing, and “good for them” for at least acknowledging their unfortunate past.

As I matured and became more educated and enlightened, I recognized that Juneteenth is an integral part of Black History in the United States. The underlying theme of the date’s significance, and other barbarities of slavery, is the control, the withholding and the manipulation of communication and information. This subversive act—the ability for one person to conceal critical information from another—has the power to shape a person’s existence, and freedom. 

Slave owners and the political confederates made it illegal for enslaved people to learn to read and write because they knew an educated enslaved person would be more difficult to manipulate and control. Slave owners and disgruntled political allies withheld information from those who were freed in order to milk the gains slavery had provided those owners for many generations.

The internet is the exchange of information between computing devices. The internet is ubiquitous, it has no agenda, and it leans neither left or right. It is—at its core—pure. The withholding and manipulation of this pure, unfiltered information is a human depravity. Limiting access, no matter what the explanation (or excuse), is tantamount to the intentions of the slave owners in 1865.

I am constantly exploring and learning about my family’s heritage and my ethnic community’s history. In that exploration, I sometimes wonder if the southern Civil Rights leaders of the 1950's and 60’s brought the events of Juneteenth into their messaging. Obviously, my public school education did not. But I am confident that if I researched the internet, I would discover the Texan Civil Rights leaders who began the charge that led to the Juneteenth celebration that is today.

The late great Congressman John Lewis proclaimed—shortly before his passing—that

“The internet is the civil rights issue of the 21st century.”

He recognized the power of the internet and its ability to enhance Black people’s lives—and all people—across America and the world.

Mourners visit a mural of Representative John Lewis in downtown Atlanta. Lynsey Weatherspoon for The New York Times.