Generation after Generation, Fight For Black Liberation | Crewneck Sweater

Generation after generation, fight for Black liberation!

On June 19, 1865, Major General Gordon Granger and 1,800 Union troops arrived in Galveston, Texas, to issue General Order No. 3, announcing the end of slavery. But Texas’s last enslaved people were freed not by this declaration alone—they were freed by those who fought slave masters bent on wringing out every last drop of labor regardless of the war’s outcome. Black freedom was won through persistent struggle against slave masters to the very end, all paper declarations and proclamations of freedom aside.

The ending of slavery was not something to be decreed or proclaimed; freedom had to be seized from the clutches of the defeated slaveocracy by Black people acting as agents of their own liberation.

Juneteenth reminds us of the will that our people have always had to fight, the role that fight has historically played in achieving the basic rights we have today, and the necessary role of organization in our ongoing fights for freedom.

Art by Danny Thompson

• 50% cotton, 50% polyester