On Friday, Americans around the country marked Juneteenth, a holiday commemorating the ending of slavery in the United States. This year, the annual celebration of freedom came amidst a public grappling with the country’s long-standing history of systemic racism, as well as the fate of its Confederate monuments, flags and symbols amid nationwide protests against police brutality and racism after the death of George Floyd.
To mark the occasion and explore these issues at the forefront of people’s minds, the Jewish Federations of North America hosted a free webinar Friday afternoon. The featured speakers were:
- Bakari Sellers, CNN contributor and former member of the South Carolina State Legislature.
- Tiffany Cross, Resident Fellow at the Harvard Kennedy School’s Institute of Politics and former D.C. Bureau Chief for BET Network and Associate Producer for CNN
- Dr. Jason Johnson, a professor from the School of Global Journalism and Communication at Morgan State University in Baltimore and politics editor for The Source and The Root.
Watch the entire webinar here:
In a follow-up email to webinar attendees, JFNA offered the following recommendations for further reading from the three panelists:
- “The Fire Next Time,” by James Baldwin
- Say It Louder! Black Voters, White Narratives, and Saving Our Democracy,” by Tiffany Cross
- “My Vanishing Country: A Memoir,” by Bakari Sellers
