Two years ago, Minneapolis burned after a policeman there murdered George Floyd. Just months prior in Louisville, Kentucky, the police had killed (but not “murdered,” prosecutors insisted) Breonna Taylor. Those injustices went viral, amplified by a world-disrupting, inequality-exacerbating pandemic, and sent people into the streets to protest and set the city alight in discontent over the treatment of Black people at the hands of the state. In the so-called racial reckoning that followed, police officers were charged (or not) and convicted (or not) for their misconduct and politicians responded to chants of “defund the police” by giving the police even more money under the guise of “community engagement.” As these losses mounted, a consolation prize emerged: Juneteenth, long a Black Texas celebration of the end of slavery, became the latest vacation day. Corporations gave their employees the day off. Instagram infographics littered the nation’s phones. And in 2021, the Biden administration made Juneteenth a federal holiday.

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