What the Headlines Don’t Explain About Racism Details RACIAL RECKONINGS-With Juneteenth just now being made a federal holiday, one would think that America is making great strides in being less racist — systemically or otherwise. And as much of a milestone as this appears to be and as much as the recent recognition of the Tulsa massacre is — making Juneteenth into a federal holiday will no more cure racism in America than Veterans Day stops us from going to war again. You see, since the Civil War and the passage of the 14th Amendment, the battle ground has been and continues to be about voting rights — as in who gets to vote and who doesn’t. What most high school history books don’t mention are the means by which the South resisted Reconstruction following the Civil War. History books don’t delve very deeply into the racially-based violence perpetrated against African Americans at that time. Terrorism was used to end Reconstruction and suppress the Black vote and install an apartheid system that we have colloquial called Jim Crow.