Looking for powerful quotes about Juneteenth quotes? We have rounded up the best collection of Juneteenth quotes, sayings, captions, slogans, messages, (with images and pictures) to help you understand the significance of Juneteenth and racial justice.
Also See: Black Women Quotes
Juneteenth, official name of federal holiday Juneteenth National Independence Day celebrated as a symbol of freedom in the United States every year on 19 June.
Why do they call it Juneteenth?
Known to some as the country’s “second Independence Day,” Juneteenth celebrates the freedom of enslaved people in the United States at the end of the Civil War.
Juneteenth honors the emancipation of enslaved African Americans in the United States. The name “Juneteenth” is a blend of two words: “June” and “nineteenth.”
It’s believed to be the oldest African-American holiday, with annual celebrations on June 19th in different parts of the country dating back to 1866.
Also see: American Quotes To Celebrate Freedom
To celebrate the historic special day, Americans regard it as a federal holiday and is also popularly called in various names like Jubilee Day, Freedom Day, Emancipation Day, Black Independence Day and Liberation Day.
In recent times people have celebrated Juneteenth in America by taking the streets and protesting in support of the Black Lives Matter movement.
These famous Juneteenth quotes are by prominent Black leaders, activists, historical figures, celebrities, politicians, athletes, who spoke about Juneteenth in their speeches, letters, and interviews to inspire you to keep fighting against racism.
Top 10 Juneteenth Quotes
- “Juneteenth. Freedom day. June 19.” — Unknown
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“Juneteenth: Let’s celebrate the day of freedom.” — Unknown
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“Nobody’s free until everybody’s free.” — Fannie Lou Hamer
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“Where annual elections end where slavery begins.” — John Quincy Adams
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“You may kill me with your hatefulness. But still, like air, I’ll rise.” — Maya Angelou
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“We need, in every community, a group of angelic troublemakers.” — Bayard Rustin
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“It is impossible to inspire a future generation without respect foe the past, Juneteenth.” — Unknown
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“Freeing yourself was one thing, claiming ownership of that freed self was another.” — Toni Morrison
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“Do not be silent; there is no limit to the power that may be released through you.” — Howard Thurman
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“Juneteenth celebrating African American freedom, families, heritage and becoming the ancestors dream.” — Unknown
Happy Juneteenth Quotes
- “We don’t want to sit down and listen to these things, or to discuss them. But we have to.” — Ilyasah Shabazz
- “I prayed for freedom for twenty years, but received no answer until I prayed with my legs.” — Frederick Douglas
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“Juneteenth – the day in 1865 when news of the Emancipation Proclamation finally reached slaves in Texas.” — Unknown
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“We all require and want respect, man or woman, black or white. It’s our basic human right.” — Aretha Franklin
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“You can’t separate peace from freedom because no one can be at peace unless he has his freedom.” — Malcolm X
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“I would like to be remembered as a person who wanted to be free… so other people would be also free.” — Rosa Parks
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“History, despite its wrenching pain, cannot be unlived, but if faced with courage, need not be lived again.” — Maya Angelou
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“If you dare to struggle, you dare to win. If you dare not struggle, then damn it, you don’t deserve to win.” — Fred Hampton
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“Whenever I hear anyone arguing for slavery, I feel a strong impulse to see it tried on him personally.” — Abraham Lincoln
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“Happy Juneteenth Day! A day of remembrance. Today we rejoice, reflect and celebrate our achievements throughout history.” — Unknown
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“No violence will create peace…To effect change we must show love in the face of hate and peace in the face of violence.” — Beyonce
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“I am not going to stand up to show pride in a flag for a country that oppresses Black people and people of color.” — Colin Kaepernick
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“In the end, anti-black, anti-female, and all forms of discrimination are equivalent to the same thing: anti-humanism.” — Shirley Chisholm
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“I had crossed the line. I was free; but there was no one to welcome me to the land of freedom. I was a stranger in a strange land.” — Harriet Tubman
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“Freedom is not something that one people can bestow on another as a gift. They claim it as their own and none can keep it from them.” — Kwame Nkrumah
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“I should fight for my liberty as long as my strength lasted, and when the time came for me to go, the Lord would let them take me.” — Harriet Tubman
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“The day we were free—everyone was free. Why not make it a paid holiday? We deserve that…We want a day that is inclusive to everyone.” — Pharrell Williams
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“God’s time (Emancipation) is always near. He set the North Star in the heavens; He gave me the strength in my limbs; He meant I should be free.” — Harriet Tubman
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“My people have a country of their own to go to if they choose… Africa… but, this America belongs to them just as much as it does to any of the white race.” — Josephine Baker
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“You must never, ever give out. We must keep the faith because we are one people. We are brothers and sisters. We all live in the same house: The American house.” — John Lewis
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“So now they’re shaking in their boots and looking for someone to give them the answer they want to hear. Not the truth, but some lie that will protect them from the truth.” — Ralph Ellison
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“I have a dream that one day this nation will rise up and live out the true meaning of its creed: We hold these truths to be self-evident that all men are created equal.” — Martin Luther King Jr.
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“I had reasoned this out in my mind; there was one of two things I had a right to, liberty, or death; if I could not have one, I would have the other; for no man should take me alive.” — Harriet Tubman
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“Words of Emancipation didn’t arrive until the middle of June so they called it Juneteenth. So that was it, the night of Juneteenth, his mind went on. The celebration of a gaudy illusion.” — Ralph Ellison
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“…my daddy told me that they whooped and hollered and bored holes in trees with augers and stopped it up with [gun] powder and light and that would be their blast for the celebration.” — Haye Turner
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“Whether it’s freedom to express, freedom to live, freedom to earn, freedom to thrive, freedom to learn, whatever it is, I want to make sure that I’m a part of these spaces and opening doors.” — Angela Rye
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“We are going to get out here, I am going to get out here and get something done. We have to wake up America. We have to make America uncomfortable like we’ve been uncomfortable for 400 years.” — Gwen Carr
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“The persistence of violent white nationalism – these things have deep ugly roots, inextricably tied to slavery and its aftermath. We will be better off unearthing it and airing it out if we really want repair.” — Joy Reid
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“Today on Juneteenth, the day we celebrate the end of slavery, the day we memorialize those who offered us hope for the future and the day when we renew our commitment to the struggle for freedom.” — Angela Davis
- “We have suffered discrimination. We have suffered isolation and undermining. But we stand up for America, oftentimes when others who think they are more patriotic, who say they are more patriotic, do not.” — Maxine Waters
- “Women who fought and sacrificed so much for equality and liberty and just for all, including Black women who are often, too often overlooked, but so often prove they are the backbone of our democracy.” — Kamala Harris
- “Every year we must remind successive generations that this event triggered a series of events that one by one defines the challenges and responsibilities of successive generations. That’s why we need this holiday.” — Al Edwards
- “Anytime anyone is enslaved, or in any way deprived of his liberty, if that person is a human being, as far as I am concerned he is justified to resort to whatever methods necessary to bring about his liberty again.” — Malcolm X
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“Juneteenth (June 19) is an annual celebration for the end slavery in the U.S. The holiday commemorates a specific date – June 19, 1865, the federal troops arrived in Texas to ensure that all enslaved people were freed.” — Unknown
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“Juneteenth represents liberation and it belongs to us. It is a constant reminder that Black freedom is predestined, that only we can tell our stories and that there is no freedom, without Black freedom.” — Dannese Mapanda
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“If the cruelties of slavery could not stop us, the opposition we now face will surely fail. Because the goal of America is freedom, abused and scorned tho’ we may be, our destiny is tied up with America’s destiny.” — Martin Luther King Jr.
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“We black folk, our history, and our present being are a mirror of all the manifold experiences of America. What we want, what we represent, what we endure is what America is. If we black folk perish, America will perish.” — Richard Wright
- “Juneteenth, also known as Emancipation Day, symbolizes the end of slavery and commemorates the reading of Republican president Abraham Lincoln’s general order #3 on June 19, 1865 in Texas, which announced the freeing of slaves.” — Unknown
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“America has looted black people. America looted the Native Americans when they first came here, looting is what you do. We learned it from you. We learned violence from you. If you want us to do better, then damnit, you do better.” — Tamika Mallory
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“Juneteenth has never been a celebration of victory or an acceptance of the way things are. It’s a celebration of progress. It’s an affirmation that despite the most painful parts of our history, change is possible—and there is still so much work to do.” — Barack Obama
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“There’s no other race, to me, that has such a tough history for hundreds and hundreds of years, and only the strong survive, so we were the strongest and the most mentally tough, and I’m really proud to wear this color every single day of my life.” — Serena Williams
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“My fellow Americans, this is a special moment in our history. Just as people of all faiths and no faiths, and all backgrounds, creeds, and colors banded together decades ago to fight for equality and justice in a peaceful, orderly, nonviolent fashion, we must do so again.” — John Lewis
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“No one is born hating another person because of the color of his skin, or his background, or his religion. People must learn to hate, and if they can learn to hate, they can be taught to love, for love comes more naturally to the human heart than its opposite.” — Nelson Mandela
Also See: Patriotic 4th Of July Quotes
Keep Fighting Quotes For Juneteenth
- “I have always hated slavery, I think as much as any Abolitionist.” — Abraham Lincoln
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“My humanity is bound up in yours, for we can only be human together.” — Desmond Tutu
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“If you know whence you came, there is really no limit to where you can go.” — James Baldwin
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“I swear to the Lord I still can’t see why democracy means everybody but me.” — Langston Hughes
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“There are still many causes worth sacrificing for, so much history yet to be made.” — Michelle Obama
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“Struggle is a never ending process. Freedom is never really won, you earn it and win it in every generation.” — Coretta Scott King
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“Won’t it be wonderful when Black history and Native American history and Jewish history and all of U.S. history is taught from one book. Just U.S. history.” — Maya Angelou
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“Now I’ve been free, I know what a dreadful condition slavery is. I have seen hundreds of escaped slaves, but I never saw one who was willing to go back and be a slave.” — Harriet Tubman
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“I just don’t believe that when people are being unjustly oppressed that they should let someone else set rules for them by which they can come out from under that oppression.” — Malcolm X
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“Hold those things that tell your history and protect them. During slavery, who was able to read or write or keep anything? The ability to have somebody to tell your story to is so important…it says: ‘I was here. I may be sold tomorrow. But you know I was here.’” — Maya Angelou
Emancipation and Freedom Quotes By MLK
- “What matters is not how long you live…but how you live.” — Martin Luther King Jr.
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“Love is the only force capable of transforming an enemy into a friend.” — Martin Luther King Jr.
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“Our lives begin to end the day we become silent about things that matter.” — Martin Luther King Jr.
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“Freedom is never voluntarily given by the oppressor; it must be demanded by the oppressed.” — Martin Luther King Jr.
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“Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere. We are caught in an inescapable network of mutuality, tied in a single garment of destiny. Whatever affects one directly, affects all indirectly.” — Martin Luther King
There are many ways Americans celebrate Juneteenth, including marches, festivals, shows and cookouts. This is a time when Americans realize and also acknowledge the injustices of the country’s past and raise the spirit of fighting against racism.
Many political figures have talked about the day of Juneteenth and have requested America’s country to remember their martyrs and help the Black community not feel excluded. Here’s a list of quotes by various figures who encouraged to keep fighting against wrong.
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Let us know which of the above Juneteenth sayings you resonate the most with? If you have a quote which is not on the above list, please share it in the comments section below.
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