This Juneteenth I want people to know and remember Alfred Irving who was finally freed from chattel slavery in 1942 and Mae Louis Miller who was finally freed from peonage slavery in 1963.
Slavery was not "200 years ago," the last living former enslaved african american passed away in 2014 at 70 years old.
Chattell slavery in America did not go away, it adapted. It became peonage, sharecropping, vagrancy laws, "chain gangs" or convict leasing, and continues into the modern day prison system and the systematic incarceration of black and brown people and expanded to forced detention of immigrants in modern day America.
Do not believe the common narrative that the emancipation proclamation freed every slave. There are many more who were unable to tell their stories out of shame or fear of harm.
I reccomend that people read Slavery by Another Name by Douglas A. Blackmon or watch the 90 minute documentary / film adaptation
If nothing else please remember the names of the two people that American society wants you to forget.