Juneteenth is the oldest national day marking the end of slavery in the United States. On June 19, 1865, Union Major General Gordon Granger reached Galveston, Texas, and read General Order No. 3: “All enslaved people are free.”
The news arrived more than two years after the Emancipation Proclamation. The long delay proved that freedom delayed is freedom denied. Laws alone cannot undo racism, poverty, sexism, or other forces that block people from living full, healthy lives. We celebrate July 4 and Juneteenth as milestones of freedom, yet many people, then and now, have been free only on paper. Real freedom needs access: to information, to resources, to fair laws, and to care.
Community health centers were born from that idea. In the 1960s, Drs. Jack Geiger and Count Gibson opened the first centers in rural Mississippi and at Boston’s Columbia Point specifically to confront the racial, economic, and geographic barriers that kept people from the care they deserved. These centers declared that healthcare, like freedom, must reach everyone, not just those whom systems choose to inform, protect, and advance.
Fenway Health, founded in 1971, grew from the same spirit. Started by student activists, we’ve grown to specialize in care for the LGBTQIA+ community and serve anyone who needs expert, welcoming care.
Information saves lives. The people of Galveston were legally free but trapped until they heard the news two years later. In health, delayed facts about things such as, HIV prevention, cancer screening, or gender-affirming care can be just as harmful.
Systems either hide freedom or spread it. Racism, homophobia, and transphobia work like the forces that once hid emancipation, they starve people of resources and erase their stories.
Today, rights are again under fire, against trans youth, immigrants, and reproductive choice. History warns us: rights not protected can disappear. Juneteenth is a history lesson and a guide. No one should wait in the shadows for the freedom and the healthcare that already belongs to them. Freedom delayed is freedom denied, whether on a plantation in 1865 or in a clinic, the statehouse or the community in 2025. Juneteenth celebrations involve gathering to eat, sing, and look out for one another. Community health centers follow that model: care shaped by, and delivered to, the people it serves.
Fenway Health commits to the unfinished work of liberation by protecting human rights and turning them into lived realities.
Happy Juneteenth from all of us at Fenway Health.