It’s Thursday, June 19. This is The Front Page, your daily window into the world of The Free Press—and our take on the world at large. Today: Condi Rice on Juneteenth; business leaders warn of an exodus from New York City; should the U.S. blow up Fordow?; and much more.
But first: How to teach young Americans about slavery.
Today marks Juneteenth, the day when news of the Emancipation Proclamation first reached Galveston, Texas, weeks after the Civil War came to an end in 1865. It’s a moment for Americans to reflect on the legacy of slavery—and, as I argue in my latest piece, a time to reevaluate how we understand that legacy.
I recently taught a University of Austin freshman class on the legacy of slavery. It was an enlightening experience, in large part because I found out how little young Americans know about slavery as a worldwide phenomenon.
In high schools across the country, kids are told that slavery was essentially an American invention. This narrow perspective is doing us no favors as a country. It’s also, as a historical matter, simply incorrect.
We don’t need to minimize the horrors of American slavery to give our young people a sense of how this odious practice existed throughout the world. So today I propose a new way of teaching students about slavery—one that’s actually rooted in historical reality. I hope you give it a read.
—Coleman Hughes
Condoleezza Rice: Juneteenth Is Our Second Independence Day |
|
|
|
 |
|
Last Juneteenth, former Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice reminded us that when we celebrate the liberation of the last slaves of the Confederacy, we celebrate America. “In some sense,” Rice wrote, “the history of the United States is a story of striving to make their soaring words—We the People—real to every American. It’s the story of becoming what we profess to be.” | | |
|
Escape from New York: Business Leaders Say They’ll Flee If Mamdani Wins |
|
|
|
 |
|
Business, the billionaire Bill Ackman says, is a “confidence game,” and under a Mayor Zohran Mamdani, “you’re going to have a massive loss of confidence in doing business in New York.” New York’s business class is sweating at the prospect of a socialist mayor—and preparing to skip town should he win. Olivia Reingold reports. | | |
|
What Happens After ICE Raids Your Company? |
|
|
|
 |
|
ICE agents rounded up 80 illegal employees at a meatpacking plant in Nebraska—fingerprinting and detaining them. So why did a federal computer system identify them as legal residents? As ICE agents scramble to meet Trump’s goal of deporting one million illegal immigrants by the year's end, every rock they overturn reveals yet another crack in the immigration system. Frannie Block and Maddie Rowley report. | | |
|
