In nationalizing Juneteenth, the U.S. is still late to the hemisphere’s party

In that year, Congress passed the first infamous Fugitive Slave Act, which laid out a legal process for the return of runaways and reflected in no small measure the lurking terror of White enslavers who knew all too well how desperately their slaves wanted to rid themselves of their oppressors. Nevertheless, myriad armed slave rebellions took place in the United States in the first half of the 19th century. Awareness of this history, once long forgotten, is growing: In 2019, for example, hundreds of reenactors took part in a two-day, 26-mile trek through Louisiana to re-create the 1811 German Coast Uprising, which ended brutally, with the murder of dozens of enslaved people.