Celebrate Juneteenth 2022
Celebrate Juneteenth 2022

Image inspired by TFA The Collective | 2020 Black Corps Member Summit graphic by Kion Saunders.
The holiday is marked with parades and floats, prayer and dancing, food, and family. In Texas, Juneteenth has been an official holiday since 1979. In 2021, it was made a federal holiday. By 2019, 48 states including the District of Columbia recognized Juneteenth. By 2020, only Texas had adopted the holiday as a paid holiday for state employees. As of 2021, more states declared Juneteenth a paid holiday for state employees in Minnesota, Illinois, New York, Washington, and Virginia. The links below offer an entry point into the history of the holiday, and its extra resonance this year.
For schools that are still in session, the following resources are a helpful way for teachers to engage students in conversations and projects.
Share these books and movies, which celebrate Black people and culture in the United States, with students.
These recommended books are appropriate for teenager and adult readers:
Movies are also a valuable resource for learning Black history. Some recommendations are:
13th | Devil in a Blue Dress | Many Rivers To Cross | The Black Panthers; Vanguard of the Revolution |
42 | Dreamgirls | Moonlight | The Central Park 5 |
A Long Walk Home (1990) | Eyes on the Prize | Mudbound | The Color Purple |
A Raisin in the Sun | Fences | Murder on a Sunday Morning | The Five Heartbeats |
A Time to Kill | Finding Fela! | Paris is Burning | The Hurricane |
Ali | Fruitvale Station | Porgy & Bess | The Jackie Robinson Story |
Amistad | Get On Up | Posse | The Josephine Story |
Bamboozled | Ghosts of Mississippi | Purple Rain | The Loving Story |
Barry | Glory | Ray | The Murder of Fred Hampton |
Bessie | Half of A Yellow Sun | Red Tails | The Night Tulsa Burned |
Black Panther | Hallelujah | Remember The Titans | The Princess and the Frog |
Blood Diamonds | Harlem Nights | Rosewood | The Pursuit of Happyness |
Bopha! | Hidden Figures | Rubble Kings | The Rise and Fall of Jim Crow |
Boyz In the Hood | Hotel Rwanda | Sarafina! | The Tulsa Lynching of 1921: A Hidden Story |
Cabin In The Sky | Introducing Dorothy Dandridge | Scottsboro: An American Tragedy | The Tuskegee Airmen |
Carmen Jones | Just Cause | Selma | The Wiz |
Celia | Just Mercy | Slavery and the Making of America | The Wronged Man |
Claudine | Lady Sings The Blues | Southside with Me | Time: The Kalief Browder Story |
Cooley High | Lean on Me | Sparkle | Tupac: Resurrection |
Crooklyn | Let the Fire Burn | Talk To Me | Two Trains Running |
Cry Freedom | Mahogany | Tangerine | What Happened Miss Simone |
Cry, The Beloved Country | Malcolm X | The African-Americans: Many Rivers to Cross with Henry Louis | When the Levees Broke: A Requiem in Four Acts |
Dead Presidents | Mama Africa | The Art of Rap | Within Our Gates |
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