Juneteenth celebrations take on new urgency

The holiday honoring the end of slavery is under renewed focus this year amid a new push for racial justice. NBC's Alice Barr reports.

WASHINGTON (NBC News) — In a time of racial reckoning in America, Juneteenth took on a powerful new meaning this year, driving demonstrators into the streets in cities from coast to coast and in the nation’s capitol.

“I always fantasized that Juneteenth being looked at – like July 4th – an independence for people it actually means independence for – and it seems like it has actually come to pass this year,” said demonstrator Kymone Freeman.

The annual holiday celebrates the day the last slaves in this country learned they were free, two and a half years after the Emancipation Proclamation.

That justice delayed is echoing in so much of what protesters are still fighting against today.

“Right now many of us feel like we’re still not free, and it’s justice denied and justice delayed,” said marcher Ronald Moten.

The deaths of George Floyd, Breonna Taylor and Rayshard Brooks at the hands of police have roiled the nation, with the past three weeks of demonstrations demanding a hard look at the past 400 years of Black life in America.

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