By Greg LaRose | Editor-in-Chief
Happy Juneteenth! Our team has the day off, and we hope you have the opportunity today to celebrate freedom.
An Avondale resident stands amid the wreckage of a house heavily damaged Thursday, June 18, 2026, by the storm bands of Tropical Storm Arthur. (Photo courtesy of WVUE-TV Fox 8)
By Greg LaRose
Emergency officials in southeast Louisiana are sorting out the damage from the outer storm bands of what was Tropical Storm Arthur, while some areas braced for more rain late Thursday that could exacerbate flooding. Gov. Jeff Landry has declared an emergency in six parishes with the worst damage.
City officials from Lansing, Michigan, raise a Pride flag over the Lansing City Council at the beginning of this month. Some Republican governors are relabeling June, widely recognized as Pride Month, with conservative-friendly labels. (Katherine Dailey/Michigan Advance)
By Anna Claire Vollers
A half dozen Republican governors are pushing alternative labels for June, which is widely recognized in the United States as Pride Month. Without explicitly tying their efforts to a replacement celebration, GOP leaders have labeled June with conservative-friendly monikers, like “Nuclear Family Month,” that celebrate one type of family unit: a man and woman who are married with children.
A historical marker on the history of Juneteenth in Galveston, Texas, pictured on July 13, 2022. (Andrew DeMillo/Arkansas Advocate)
COMMENTARY
By Rodney Cates
Today, Juneteenth commemorates the end of slavery in the U.S. But the story for formerly enslaved people continued to unfold in complex ways well after the Emancipation Proclamation, including when it came to their educational journeys. Freedom was not just confined to someone’s physical enslavement, but mental enslavement as well, bound in the laws that barred enslaved people from receiving an education in Southern states.
NEWS FROM THE STATES
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