I'll keep saying it, keeping millions of ppl in poverty is a choice this country makes every day. There is enough money for ppl not to be evicted fro… - Clint Smith

we recognize that, as a symbol, Juneteenth is not — that it matters, that it is important, but it is clearly not enough. And I think the fact that Juneteenth has happened is reflective of a shift in our public consciousness, but also of the work that Black Texans and Black people across this country have done for decades to make this moment possible.

The Statue of Liberty is an extension of a tradition that seems to embody the contradictions in America's promise, and a reminder that its promises have not always been extended to us. As the narrator in James Baldwin's 1960 short story "This Morning, This Evening, So Soon" puts it, "I would never know what this statue meant to others, she had always been an ugly joke for me."

At some point it is no longer a question of whether we can learn this history but whether we have the collective will to reckon with it.