Inspiring Juneteenth Quotes: A Celebration of Freedom and Resilience

"Success is to be measured not so much by the position that one has reached in life as by the obstacles which he has overcome."

- Booker T. Washington

"Peace is necessary. For justice, it is necessary. For hope, it is necessary, for our future."

- Harry Belafonte

"When we show up, act boldly, and practice the best ways to be wrong, we fail forward. No matter where we end up, we’ve grown from where we began."

- Stacey Abrams

"To be once defeated is to find cause for an everlasting struggle to reach the top."

- Marcus Garvey

"You need not be afraid to give us our rights for fear we will take too much — for we can’t take more than our pint’ll hold."

- Sojourner Truth

"Juneteenth has never been a celebration of victory or an acceptance of the way things are. It's a celebration of progress. It's an affirmation that despite the most painful parts of our history, change is possible—and there is still so much work to do."

- Barack Obama

"You have to act as if it were possible to radically transform the world. And you have to do it all the time."

- Angela Davis

"Civility is the recognition that all people have dignity that’s inherent to their person, no matter their religion race, gender, sexuality or ability."

- Opal Tometi

"The way to right wrongs is to turn the light of truth upon them."

- Ida B. Wells

"Darkness cannot drive out darkness, only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate, only love can do that."

- Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.

"Movements don’t die because struggle doesn’t die."

- Harry Belafonte

"It’s freedom for everybody or freedom for nobody."

- Malcolm X

"I learned that courage was not the absence of fear, but the triumph over it. The brave man is not he who does not feel afraid, but he who conquers that fear."

- Nelson Mandela

"We cannot walk alone. And as we walk, we must make the pledge that we shall always march ahead. We cannot turn back."

- Martin Luther King Jr.

"No matter who you are or what you look like, how you started off, or how and who you love, America is a place where you can write your own destiny."

- Barack Obama

"Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere. We are caught in an inescapable network of mutuality, tied in a single garment of destiny. Whatever affects one directly, affects all indirectly."

- Martin Luther King, Jr.

"But if you know what life is worth / You would look for yours on Earth / And now a you see the light / You stand up for your right."

- Bob Marley

"Nothing can stop the power of a committed and determined people to make a difference in our society."

- John Lewis

"Let us not assume for one moment that our work is done, the struggle for equal justice continues."

- Fred David Gray

"Release all bitterness. Hold only love, only peace in your heart, knowing that the battle of good to overcome evil is already won."

- John Lewis

"Remember this in the darkest moments, when the work doesn’t seem worth it, and change seems just out of reach: out of our willingness to push through comes a tremendous power."

- Stacey Abrams

"We will not be satisfied until justice rolls down like waters, and righteousness like a mighty stream."

- Martin Luther King Jr.

"We can’t become what we need to be by remaining what we are."

- Oprah Winfrey

"Our strength lies in the fact that we are supported by the majority of Americans. And our motivation lies in our obligation to make sure their voices are heard and acknowledged by those who set public policy in this country."

- Faye Wattleton

"I just don’t know how to describe it. I just feel like it’s the beginning of something great, and I want to be a part of it."

- Opal Lee

"Every Black person you meet is a MIRACLE. We are descended of lineages meant to be destroyed by slavery or colonization. Our lives are hard-fought and hard-earned. We are priceless. We are valuable because of our humanity – and declared valuable because our ancestors declared our worth when they fought for us to live."

- Brittany Packnett Cunningham

"I would like to be remembered as a person who wanted to be free… so other people would be also free."

- Rosa Parks

"Service it the rent that you pay for room on this earth."

- Shirley Chisholm

"The most common way people give up their power is by thinking they don’t have any."

- Alice Walker

"If they don’t give you a seat at the table, bring a folding chair."

- Shirley Chisholm

"Neither love nor terror makes one blind: indifference makes one blind."

- James Baldwin

"We have simply got to make people aware that none of us are free until we’re all free."

- Opal Lee

"To the children of our country, regardless of your gender, our country has sent you a clear message: Dream with ambition, lead with conviction, and see yourself in a way that others might not see you, simply because they’ve never seen it before."

- Kamala Harris

"Where we are met with cynicism and doubts and those who tell us that we can’t, we will respond with that timeless creed that sums up the spirit of a people: Yes, we can."

- Barack Obama

"I thrive on obstacles. If I’m told that it can’t be told, then I push harder."

- Issa Rae

"The pursuit of justice is all I have ever known."

- Harry Belafonte

"Make a career of humanity. Commit yourself to the noble struggle for equal rights. You will make a better person of yourself, a greater nation of your country, and a finer world to live in."

- Martin Luther King

"I got to fight on till I leave here, and I hope I leave some footprints."

- Mattie Jones

"I don’t measure America by its achievement, but by its potential."

- Shirley Chisholm

"Whether we are born here or seek refuge here, there’s a place for us all. We must remember it’s not my America or your America. It’s our America."

- Michelle Obama

"Let no voice but your own speak to you from the depths. Let no influence but your own raise you in time of peace and time of war."

- Marcus Garvey

"Sometimes we have to do the work even though we don’t yet see a glimmer on the horizon that it’s actually going to be possible."

- Angela Davis

"The ultimate measure of a man is not where he stands in moments of comfort and convenience, but where he stands at times of challenge and controversy."

- Martin Luther King, Jr.

"Human rights are something you were born with. Human rights are your God-given rights. Human rights are the rights that are recognized by all nations of this earth."

- Malcolm X

"Juneteenth means so much to me. It represents the freedom that my ancestors fought so tirelessly for. But rather than focusing on the brutalization of my people then and now. I choose to focus on hope. June 19th reminds me that I am the force of power to change this world and to follow in the footsteps of my ancestors to work towards liberation."

- Mariah Cooley

"A fundamental concern for others in our individual and community lives would go a long way in making the world the better place we so passionately dreamt of."

- Nelson Mandela

"…Juneteenth, the day we celebrate the end of slavery, the day we memorialize those who offered us hope for the future and the day when we renew our commitment to the struggle for freedom."

- Angela Davis

"We all require and want respect, man or woman, Black or white. It’s our basic human right."

- Aretha Franklin

"We black folk, our history, and our present being are a mirror of all the manifold experiences of America. What we want, what we represent, what we endure is what America is. If we black folk perish, America will perish."

- Richard Wright

"I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character."

- Martin Luther King Jr.

"There’s no other race, to me, that has such a tough history for hundreds and hundreds of years, and only the strong survive, so we were the strongest and the most mentally tough, and I’m really proud to wear this color every single day of my life."

- Serena Williams

"Every June 19th is an opportunity for us to continue the momentum of memory, and the parade and the self-determination movements."

- Dr. Greg Carr

"You must never, ever give out. We must keep the faith because we are one people. We are brothers and sisters. We all live in the same house: the American house."

- John Lewis

"Knowledge makes a man unfit to be a slave."

- Frederick Douglass

"You can’t separate peace from freedom, because no one can be at peace unless he has his freedom."

- Malcolm X

"My humanity is bound up in yours, for we can only be human together."

- Desmond Tutu

"There are still many causes worth sacrificing for, so much history yet to be made."

- Michelle Obama

"If the cruelties of slavery could not stop us, the opposition we now face will surely fail. Because the goal of America is freedom, abused and scorned tho’ we may be, our destiny is tied up with America’s destiny."

- Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.

"Say it loud. I’m Black and I’m proud!"

- James Brown

"The 4th of July was never about Black people. Juneteenth is just for us. As Black people, we are told we don’t deserve our own holidays rooted in our own history. Everything is whitewashed. Juneteenth is for us…Juneteenth symbolizes the hope that my children and grandchildren will be free. It’s Black Joy and Black tenacity to survive."

- Tanesha Grant

"You may kill me with your hatefulness. But still, like air, I’ll rise."

- Maya Angelou

"We are not ready to fight because we love fighting. We are ready to fight because we are worth fighting for."

- Zoé Samudzi

"Every year we must remind successive generations that this event triggered a series of events that one by one defines the challenges and responsibilities of successive generations. That’s why we need this holiday."

- Al Edwards

"Nobody’s free until everybody’s free."

- Fannie Lou Hamer

"Freedom is never voluntarily given by the oppressor; it must be demanded by the oppressed."

- Dr. Martin Luther King Jr

"What I love about Juneteenth is that even in that extended wait, we still find something to celebrate. Even though the story has never been tidy, and Black folks have had to march and fight for every inch of our freedom, our story is nonetheless one of progress."

- Michelle Obama

"Freeing yourself was one thing, claiming ownership of that freed self was another."

- Toni Morrison

"My fellow Americans, this is a special moment in our history. Just as people of all faiths and no faiths, and all backgrounds, creeds, and colors banded together decades ago to fight for equality and justice in a peaceful, orderly, nonviolent fashion, we must do so again."

- John Lewis

"I am not going to stand up to show pride in a flag for a country that oppresses Black people and people of color."

- Colin Kaepernick

"Juneteenth has never been a celebration of victory or an acceptance of the way things are. It’s a celebration of progress. It’s an affirmation that despite the most painful parts of our history, change is possible—and there is still so much work to do."

- Barack Obama

"Not everything that is faced can be changed, but nothing can be changed until it is faced."

- James Baldwin

"Juneteenth means so much to me. It represents the freedom that my ancestors fought so tirelessly for. But rather than focusing on the brutalization of my people then and now, I choose to focus on hope."

- Mariah Cooley

"Juneteenth may mark just one moment in the struggle for emancipation, but the holiday gives us an occasion to reflect on the profound contributions of enslaved Black Americans to the cause of human freedom. It gives us another way to recognize the central place of slavery and its demise in our national story."

- Jamelle Bouie

"Anytime anyone is enslaved, or in any way deprived of his liberty, if that person is a human being, as far as I am concerned he is justified to resort to whatever methods necessary to bring about his liberty again."

- Malcolm X

"As Black women, we’re always given these seemingly devastating experiences—experiences that could absolutely break us. But what the caterpillar calls the end of the world, the master calls the butterfly. What we do as Black women is take the worst situations and create from that point."

- Viola Davis

"The flag that was the symbol of slavery on the high seas for a long time was not the Confederate battle flag, it was sadly the Stars and Stripes."

- Alan Keyes

"I swear to the Lord I still can’t see why democracy means everybody but me."

- Langston Hughes

"Won’t it be wonderful when Black history and Native American history and Jewish history and all of U.S. history is taught from one book. Just U.S. history."

- Maya Angelou

"We’re in denial of the African holocaust. Most times, people don’t want to talk about it. One is often restless or termed a racist just for having compassion for the African experience, for speaking truth to the trans-Atlantic and Arab slave trades, for speaking truth to the significant omission of our history. We don’t want to sit down and listen to these things, or to discuss them. But we have to."

- Ilyasah Shabazz

"Juneteenth reminds me of Black freedom dreams, my freedom dreams."

- Dannese Mapanda

"We shall overcome because the arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends toward justice."

- Martin Luther King Jr.

"Ours is not the struggle of one day, one week or one year. Ours is not the struggle of one judicial appointment or presidential term. Ours is the struggle of a lifetime, or maybe even many lifetimes, and each one of us in every generation must do our part."

- John Lewis

"I am no longer accepting the things I cannot change. I am changing the things I cannot accept."

- Angela Y. Davis

"Now I’ve been free, I know what a dreadful condition slavery is. I have seen hundreds of escaped slaves, but I never saw one who was willing to go back and be a slave."

- Harriet Tubman

"Slavery is theft—theft of a life, theft of work, theft of any property or produce, theft even of the children a slave might have borne."

- Kevin Bales

"Women who fought and sacrificed so much for equality and liberty and justice for all, including the Black women who are often, too often overlooked, but so often prove they are the backbone of our democracy."

- Kamala Harris

"I would like to be remembered as a person who wanted to be free…so other people would be also free."

- Rosa Parks

"Struggle is a never-ending process. Freedom is never really won, you earn it and win it in every generation."

- Coretta Scott King

"The day we were free—everyone was free. Why not make it a paid holiday? We deserve that.… We want a day that is inclusive to everyone."

- Pharrell Williams

"Juneteenth allows us to remember how far Black people have progressed since, and it is a reminder of the strength we have within us."

- Bethel Kyeza

"No one is born hating another person because of the color of his skin, or his background, or his religion. People must learn to hate, and if they can learn to hate, they can be taught to love, for love comes more naturally to the human heart than its opposite."

- Nelson Mandela

"We are going to get out here, I am going to get out here and get something done. We have to wake up, America. We have to make America uncomfortable like we’ve been uncomfortable for 400 years."

- Gwen Carr

"I just don’t believe that when people are being unjustly oppressed that they should let someone else set rules for them by which they can come out from under that oppression."

- Malcolm X

"Whether it’s freedom to express, freedom to live, freedom to earn, freedom to thrive, freedom to learn, whatever it is, I want to make sure that I’m a part of these spaces and opening doors."

- Angela Rye

"I knew then and I know now, when it comes to justice, there’s no easy way to get it. You can’t sugarcoat it. You have to take a stand and say, ‘This is not right.’"

- Claudette Colvin

"When day comes we step out of the shade / Aflame and unafraid / The new dawn blooms as we free it / For there is always light / If only we're brave enough to see it / If only we're brave enough to be it."

- Amanda Gorman

"People think it’s a Black thing, when it’s not. It’s not a Texas thing. It’s not that. Juneteenth means freedom, and I mean for everybody."

- Opal Lee

"Juneteenth has never been a celebration of victory, or an acceptance of the way things are. Instead, it's a celebration of progress. It's an affirmation that despite the most painful parts of our history, things do get better. America can change."

- President Barack Obama

"We are gathered here in a house built by enslaved people. We are footsteps away from where President Abraham Lincoln signed the Emancipation Proclamation. And we are here to witness President Joe Biden establish Juneteenth as a national holiday. We have come far. And we have far to go. But today is a day of celebration. It is not only a day of pride, it is also a day for us to reaffirm and rededicate ourselves to action."

- Vice President Kamala Harris

"Hold those things that tell your history and protect them. During slavery, who was able to read or write or keep anything? The ability to have somebody to tell your story to is so important. It says: ‘I was here. I may be sold tomorrow. But you know I was here.’"

- Maya Angelou

"We Black folk, our history and our present being are a mirror of all the manifold experiences of America. What we want, what we represent, what we endure is what America is. If we Black folk perish, America will perish."

- Richard Wright

"Ours is not the struggle of one day, one week, or one year. Ours is not the struggle of one judicial appointment or presidential term. Ours is the struggle of a lifetime, or maybe even many lifetimes, and each one of us in every generation must do our part."

- John Lewis

"You can't separate peace from freedom, because no one can be at peace unless he has his freedom."

- Malcolm X

"Every Black person you meet is a miracle... We are valuable because of our humanity and declared valuable because our ancestors declared our worth when they fought for us to live."

- Brittany Packnett

"Today on Juneteenth, the day we celebrate the end of slavery, the day we memorialize those who offered us hope for the future and the day when we renew our commitment to the struggle for freedom."

- Angela Davis

"Nobody's free until everybody's free."

- Fannie Lou Hamer

"I would like to be remembered as a person who wanted to be free... so other people would be also free."

- Rosa Parks

"Change will not come if we wait for some other person or if we wait for some other time. We are the ones we’ve been waiting for. We are the change that we seek."

- Barack Obama

"Juneteenth reminds me of Black freedom dreams, my freedom dreams. In 1865, the port city of Galveston, Texas, or the land formerly known as Mexico as I call it, where so much blood, Indigenous blood, Mexican and Tejano blood, Black blood had been shed, there was a freedom ring that was heard across the world."

- Dannese Mapanda

"We Black folk, our history, and our present being are a mirror of all the manifold experiences of America. If we Black folk perish, America will perish."

- Richard Wright

"You must never, ever give out. We must keep the faith because we are one people. We are brothers and sisters. We all live in the same house: The American house."

- John Lewis

"Even though the story has never been tidy, and Black folks have had to march and fight for every inch of our freedom, our story is nonetheless one of progress."

- Michelle Obama

"Freedom is not something that one people can bestow on another as a gift. They claim it as their own and none can keep it from them."

- Kwame Nkrumah

"We have simply got to make people aware that none of us are free until we’re all free, and we aren’t free yet."

- Opal Lee

"Juneteenth is another moment for me and my loved ones to build an archive of truth and experience of (ourselves) Black folks."

- Tatiana Glover

"If you dare to struggle, you dare to win. If you dare not struggle, then damn it, you don't deserve to win."

- Fred Hampton

"In the end, anti-Black, anti-female and all forms of discrimination are equivalent to the same thing: anti-humanism."

- Shirley Chisholm

"We may encounter many defeats but we must not be defeated."

- Maya Angelou

"Faith is taking the first step even when you don’t see the whole staircase."

- Martin Luther King Jr.

"Success isn’t about how much money you make; it’s about the difference you make in people’s lives."

- Michelle Obama

"The future rewards those who press on. I don’t have time to feel sorry for myself. I don’t have time to complain. I’m going to press on."

- Barack Obama

"Today on Juneteenth: the day we celebrate the end of slavery, the day we memorialize those who offered us hope for the future and the day when we renew our commitment to the struggle for freedom."

- Angela Davis

"If there is no struggle, there is no progress."

- Frederick Douglass

"It might seem like a small moment in time, but it is a critical moment in the long struggle to realize the promises of American democracy and freedom. Juneteenth would surely have gone unmarked in our collective historical memory had it not been for the thousands of formerly enslaved people who kindled the small flame of that moment."

- Shennette Garrett-Scott, PhD

"Happy Juneteenth! Being Black is your activism. Black excellence is a form of protest. Black joy is your right."

- Beyoncé

"You cannot take your freedoms for granted. Just like generations who have come before you, you have to do your part to preserve and protect those freedoms."

- Michelle Obama

"We are celebrating African American liberty, but a liberty that has typically come delayed, a liberty that was not promised, but something that we continuously have to fight for...including today."

- Amanda Gorman

"Juneteenth means so much to me. It represents the freedom that my ancestors fought so tirelessly for. But rather than focusing on the brutalization of my people then and now. I choose to focus on hope."

- Mariah Cooley

"Juneteenth is a day of profound weight and profound power."

- President Joseph R. Biden

"The American education system has taught us as children that Black people have history in pain and survival. They have failed to teach us our history in joy, success, innovations and so much more. Juneteenth is a reclaim on our history that has been stolen."

- Nia White

"Liberation lies within us and will not be formed from the current institutional structures we have in place, for it never has."

- Fatimata Cham

"Emancipation wasn’t a gift bestowed on the slaves; it was something they took for themselves, the culmination of their long struggle for freedom."

- Jamelle Bouie

"If you want to fly, you have to give up the things that weigh you down."

- Toni Morrison

"What the people want is simple. They want an America as good as its promise."

- Barbara Jordan

"Juneteenth is important to me because till this day black people are still subject to racial injustice on a global scale, and are still victims of racial abuse regardless of where they are from. Juneteenth allows us to remember how far black people have progressed since and it is a reminder of the strength we have within us."

- Bethel Kyeza

"If you know whence you came, there is really no limit to where you can go."

- James Baldwin

"I love that Juneteenth is now an official federal holiday. A time to honor our past and those who’ve forged a path to our present."

- Oprah Winfrey

"What historical narrative are we willing to weave in order to remind people not only that we were here enduring the trials but that we stared the fang toothed wolves of injustice in the face and said ‘no more.’"

- Travon Free

"The proclamation notes that freedom shall not be repressed. This is what I believe to be the primary significance of Juneteenth."

- Theodorea Regina Berry

"The day we were free—everyone was free. Why not make it a paid holiday? We deserve that...We want a day that is inclusive to everyone."

- Pharrell Williams

"Turn your wounds into wisdom."

- Oprah Winfrey

"We are going to get out here, I am going to get out here and get something done. We have to wake up America. We have to make America uncomfortable like we’ve been uncomfortable for 400 years."

- Gwen Carr

"Hold fast to dreams, for if dreams die, life is a broken-winged bird that cannot fly."

- Langston Hughes

"What I love about #Juneteenth is that even in that extended wait, we still find something to celebrate."

- Michelle Obama

"Juneteenth was a promise that was broken. Reconstruction failed and this country has continued to wage war on the Black body. Juneteenth also embodies the resilience of Black people. Even in the face of a broken system, we choose to find joy in resistance and celebrate in community."

- Obrian Rosario

"There are two ways of exerting one’s strength: one is pushing down, the other is pulling up."

- Booker T. Washington

"If there is just about anything to rejoice it can be my ancestors, African People who survived the atrocity and stain of slavery… I honor them these days with a guarantee that I will keep on to combat for your unexplored desires and hopes."

- Viola Davis

"Struggle is a never ending process. Freedom is never really won, you earn it and win it in every generation."

- Coretta Scott King

"Eternal vigilance is the price of liberty."

- Ida B. Wells-Barnett

"We have suffered discrimination. We have suffered isolation and undermining. But we stand up for America, oftentimes when others who think they are more patriotic, who say they are more patriotic, do not."

- Maxine Waters

"Black liberation has never just been about Black people. It’s been about a fight for our humanity, for our dignity."

- Patrisse Cullors

"Studying the blueprints of liberation, one can map out the ways we as The Global African Diaspora have continued to resist and exist under regimes of antiBlack terror."

- Brandon Gonzalez

"Happy #Juneteenth everyone! We’ve come so far—but we know we still have a long way to go."

- Halle Berry

"Juneteenth may mark just one moment in the struggle for emancipation, but the holiday gives us an occasion to reflect on the profound contributions of enslaved Black Americans to the cause of human freedom."

- Jamelle Bouie

"From this moment on when you look at the vastness of the night sky and you see those stars moving up there, know that those stars are our African ancestors dancing. They’re dancing in celebration because their lives are finally being acknowledged."

- Pharrell Williams

"The persistence of violent white nationalism - these things have deep ugly roots, inextricably tied to slavery and its aftermath. We will be better off unearthing it and airing it out if we really want repair."

- Joy Reid

"I had crossed the line. I was free; but there was no one to welcome me to the land of freedom. I was a stranger in a strange land."

- Harriet Tubman

"We never got the 40 acres. We went all the way to Herbert Hoover, and we never got the 40 acres. We didn’t get the mule. So we decided we’d ride this donkey as far as it would take us."

- Rev. Al Sharpton

"The liberation Juneteenth commemorates is cause for celebration, but it also reminds us how equality can be delayed."

- Usher

"As much as I love the Fourth of July, shouldn’t the real Independence Day be the day that everybody was free?"

- Anthony Anderson

"You need not be afraid to give us our rights for fear we will take too much—for we can’t take more than our pint’ll hold."

- Sojourner Truth

"Out of the mountain of despair, a stone of hope."

- Martin Luther King, Jr.

"Slavery is no scholar, no improver; it does not love the whistle of the railroad; it does not love the newspaper, the mail-bag, a college, a book or a preacher who has the absurd whim of saying what he thinks; it does not increase the white population; it does not improve the soil; everything goes to decay."

- Ralph Waldo Emerson

"Whenever I hear anyone arguing for slavery, I feel a strong impulse to see it tried on him personally."

- Abraham Lincoln

"Juneteenth is a date that recognizes the end of slavery in the United States. Although Juneteenth is not a day that is celebrated in the UK, it is still a reminder of the injustices black people endured."