Today, the Clark community is observing Juneteenth — a day to celebrate the ideal of human freedom while reflecting on the hard-fought battle to achieve it in our own country.

Celebrated annually on June 19, Juneteenth commemorates the day in 1865 when enslaved people in Galveston, Texas, learned of their freedom — more than two years after the Emancipation Proclamation was signed.

Over time, it has become a powerful symbol of resilience and progress.

Pulitzer Prize winner Annette Gordon-Reed, author of “On Juneteenth” and the recipient of a Clark honorary degree, has noted that our country is on a perpetual and worthy quest to try and live up to its highest ideals, one that requires an unvarnished commitment to self-examination, effective action, and the belief that change, while hard, is possible.

“History is about people and events in a particular setting and context,” she said, “and how those things have changed over time in ways that make the past different from our own time, with an understanding that those changes were not inevitable.”