title

donate to feed refugees in rafah

spreadsheet of gofundmes to evacuate families

fundraiser for esims for gaza

What you can do instead:

Learn whose land you reside on.

Pay reparations and support LANDBACK movements .

Educate your family, friends & communities.

Join Black & Indigenous-led resistance groups.

Save this for the next time someone says, "It's just a holiday."

"If your liberation depends on the erasure of an entire group of people, it's not freedom, it's colonization with a prettier name."

patriotism . . . is a superstition artificially created and maintained through a network of lies and falsehoods; a superstition that robs man of his self-respect and dignity and increases his arrogance and conceit.

Happy Black Ancestors Who Built This Country Day 🇺🇸

Please have a moment of silence for the people who were killed instead of freed when news of emancipation finally reached the furthest corners of the american south.

have another moment for the ledgers, catalogs, and records that were burned and the homes that were destroyed to hide the presence of very much alive and still enslaved people on dozens of plantations and homesteads across the south for decades after emancipation.

and have a third moment for those who were hunted and killed while fleeing the south to find safety across the border, overseas, in the north and to the west.

black people. light a candle, write a note to those who have passed telling them what you have achieved in spite of the racist and intolerant conditions of this world, feel the warmth of the flame under your hand, say a prayer of rememberance if you are religious, place the note under the candle, and then blow it out.

if you have children, sit them down and tell them anything you know about the life of oldest black person you've ever met. it doesn't have to be your own family. tell them what you know about what life was like for us in the days, years, decades after emancipation. if you don't know much, look it up and learn about it together.

This is Juneteenth.

RESIST antiblackness

REVOLT against empire

REMATRIATE the land

This Juneteenth I wanted to explore what African-American liberation would look like on Turtle Island beyond reparations. I took inspiration from my Gullah-Geechee ancestors who maintained their indigenous African lifeways and culture in the face of chattel slavery and cultural genocide.

This painting includes a character of mine who I lovingly refer to as Sister Liberation. She represents a continuum of Black women’s militant resistance against misogynoir and colonialism outside of motherhood. I call her Sister Liberation because she “ain’t nobody’s mama”.

Pictured here is Sister Liberation adorned with cowrie shell jewelry and her signature rifle (adorned with the Akan Adinkra symbols for justice, freedom, and wisdom from the past). In her left hand, she holds stalks of wild rice. In front of her, a Gullah-Geechee sweetgrass basket is adorned with Aya, the Adinkra symbol for survival and endurance. The basket is filled with indigo leaves and okra.

So first, let's clear a common misconception: no, President Abraham Lincoln did not love Black people nor see them as human equals. At best he was centrist about it (though, even his implication that 'exceptional' Black men ought to vote got him assassinated).

"My paramount object in this struggle is to save the Union, and is not either to save or to destroy slavery. If I could save the Union without freeing any slave I would do, it, and if I could save it by freeing all the slaves I would do it; and if I could save it by freeing some and leaving others alone I would also do that. What I do about slavery, and the colored race, I do because I believe it helps to save the Union...I have here stated my purpose according to my view of official duty; and I intend no modification of my oft-expressed personal wish that all men everywhere could be free."

The "freeing of slaves" after the Emancipation Proclamation in 1863 was meant to kneecap the economic and military powers of the seceded South. Lettuce stop making a white savior figure out of Lincoln, or thinking that my people's shackles were unchained via anything other than desperate war strategy and extreme violence. Think on that, for a moment.

That being said!

But not everyone in Confederate territory would immediately be free. Even though the Emancipation Proclamation was made effective in 1863, it could not be implemented in places still under Confederate control. As a result, in the westernmost Confederate state of Texas, enslaved people would not be free until much later. Freedom finally came on June 19, 1865, when some 2,000 Union troops arrived in Galveston Bay, Texas. The army announced that the more than 250,000 enslaved black people in the state, were free by executive decree. This day came to be known as "Juneteenth," by the newly freed people in Texas.

✊🏾 Freedom has always lived in our stories. This Juneteenth, five reads that hit different. Past, present, future. All liberation.

📖 Ours by @phillipbw_author A conjurer destroys plantations and builds a hidden free Black town. But what does freedom really cost?

📖 Blood Slaves by @markusredmond The enslaved free themselves 150 years before the Civil War. Supernatural horror meets alternate history.

📖 Caramelle & Carmilla by @vampyrevamp & Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu Two vampires seek sanctuary at an Underground Railroad way station. Gothic horror. Black women's resilience.

📖 We Will Rise Again edited by Karen Lord, Annalee Newitz & Malka Older Speculative fiction about protest, solidarity, and the futures we build. NK Jemisin, Nisi Shawl, adrienne maree brown, and more.

📖 The Dream Hotel by @lailawrites Detained for crimes not yet committed. A fight for freedom in a near-future surveillance state. Pulitzer Prize finalist.

Read boldly. Read free. 🤎

Every year I tell the socials to Give Black People Money for Juneteenth. 2026 ain't about to be different. Give a little, give a lot, give directly, give widely.

Black fam: you are invited to reply to this with your info/links!

How to Give

Directly, if you can, to someone's Venmo, Ko-Fi, PayPal, Patreon, & etc.

Buy their art, books, music, jewelry, zine, or whatever else they create. Again, directly if possible.

Don't have money? I gotchu: Promote the heck out of their creations for the next week.

Check the notes for Black people to give money to if you don't know any personally (or if you do! You might find new, cool people).

Boost this post through the holiday weekend. Boost the Black people you know or find here through the weekend.

I can hear some of you saying: But Tempest, isn't asking for money cringe?

Only if you let it be.

Let's not forget why Juneteenth is a thing. Let's not forget that here in the year of our Lort 2026 there are people in white houses saying the racist parts out loud every day. Money can't solve that or make it better.

It can give a person a spark of joy in dark times. Maybe they'll buy a nice dessert, or go out to eat when they normally couldn't, or pay a bill without having to stress. Maybe they will be so freaking excited someone bought that thing they made!