I have often wondered what it must have taken for my forebears in the civil rights movement to place their children in the eye of the storm. Even knowing the power of symbols to shape our historical narratives. Even after committing oneself to the struggle, how could a mother or a father look at their child and say, "She will be the one. We will go."
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I didn’t know about Juneteenth.
Not as a boy growing up in the late 1960’s in suburban Lakewood, Colorado. Not as a college student at the Eastman School of Music and the University of Miami in the 1980’s. Not as a young jazz musician in New York City in the 1990’s. It wasn’t highlighted on the news, or taught in school. To my knowledge, my parents never mentioned it either. They weren’t much for secular holidays. And rather than reliving the past, we were raised to look to the future.
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