Annette Gordon-Reed, "On Juneteenth"

In June 2021, the United States government formally recognized Juneteenth -- a long-standing celebration of the formal end of slavery in the nation -- for the first time as an official federal holiday. In this talk, acclaimed historian Annette Gordon-Reed -- winner of both the Pulitzer Prize and the National Book Award for The Hemingses of Monticello: An American Family (2008) -- will chronicle the nation's long journey from the Reconstruction era to the present, highlighting how the nation's past encounters with racial injustice help us to understand America's ongoing struggles to ensure equal justice under law. Annette Gordon-Reed is the Carl M. Loeb University Professor at Harvard Law School and a past president of the Society for Historians of the Early American Republic.