Today, we celebrate Juneteenth, the newly minted national holiday unanimously voted in by congress this week. Juneteenth, first celebrated in Galveston, TX, is the recognition by slaves in Texas (1865) that the war was over and that they were free. Tragically, the enslaved of Texas had been freed by the Emancipation of Proclamation two years earlier on Jan 1, 1863, but had not been informed of the proclamation nor freed from their dehumanizing bondage by their white slaveholders. Covenant Headquarter celebrated the day yesterday with a sermon by Rev. Dr. Alex Gee and two pieces of poetry by Rev. Drew Jackson. We invite the members and friends of Salem to take note of the holiday and to continue to wrestle and reckon with the contradictions inherent within how we define freedom in the U.S.