06/19/2026
Nova Noir is closed today in observance of Juneteenth.
We often inherit a version of history that places governments, presidents, and institutions at the center of liberation. Juneteenth asks us to look closer.
Juneteenth reminds us that emancipation was not simply news that traveled. It was and continues to be freedom seized, demanded, enforced, and continually fought for by Black people themselves.
While the holiday marks an important recognition of that history, recognition alone has never been enough. Oregon did not remove racist language from its state constitution until 2002. The last segregated schools in Mississippi were not merged until 2016, more than sixty years after Brown v. Board of Education. To pull these facts out of the abstract, our co-owner .angsty.flow was subject to these desegregation programs in Missouri in 2007. Similar to the Little Rock 9, the programs consisted of bussing young black children into white schools. For black families, it was an opportunity for their children to receive the same education white children were receiving. However the experience for black students was often traumatic.
The work of confronting racial violence, inequality, and the ongoing legacies of slavery and colonialism remains unfinished.
So yes, celebrate freedom. Support Black-owned businesses. Gather in community. But we also ask you to hold celebration alongside truth, and to honor both the joy and the struggle that Juneteenth represents.
Carousel reposted from the Zinn Education Project, featuring excerpts from Christopher Wilson’s writing on Juneteenth.
