To Remember Is to Refuse to Lie

There is something dangerously seductive about forgetting.

To forget is easier. It is cleaner. It asks nothing of you but silence—and silence, in this country, has always been more profitable than truth.

But to remember-ah—, to remember—is to choose the harder thing. It is to lay claim to the ghost in the room and say, I see you still.

Juneteenth is not just a holiday; it is a mirror. And if we dare look into it, we do not just see shackles broken—we see the hands that held the keys, the laws that delayed their turning, the laughter that rose anyway. We see people who were told they were nothing, celebrating the day they were told they were free—two years after they already were.

This is not ancient history. It is America’s present tense.

We must remember because forgetting is a kind of violence. It is a second death. It is an erasure too many of us already know by name. We must remember that democracy, as it is sold, is a promise deferred—and the fight for it, still unfinished. These holidays—Juneteenth, Indigenous Peoples’ Day, Selma Sunday—they are not just commemorations. They are protest songs etched into the calendar. They are reminders that freedom is not inherited. It is demanded.

You cannot celebrate what you are unwilling to protect. You cannot protect what you are too afraid to name.

And so, we name it. Every year. Every Juneteenth. Every sacred day of memory. We gather not just for joy—but for justice. Not just for cookouts—but for clarity. We remember so that no child will grow up thinking freedom was free, or that truth has ever come without a cost.

Because if we forget, we will lose it all again.

And the price of silence, this time, will be too high to pay.