History knows well many of those who made Juneteenth possible — men and women who marched, wrote, spoke, fought and died for the freedom the holiday would come to commemorate.
What is a bit less well understood is the personal toll the fight for freedom and, later, for equality and advancement, took.
On this Father's Day, an examination of their writings and speeches shows that, for many of the most revered Fathers of the Fight, their work was driven by dreams for a better life for their own children almost as much as it was for their people as a whole.
The Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr. underscored that reality in his "I Have A Dream" speech, drawing on the deeply personal to lay out what type of country he hoped his advocacy would help create.
"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," he said.
Like so many advocates before and after him, King's efforts took him away from his beloved children for long stretches of time. Nonetheless, King, again like advocates before and after him, tried to guide and mold his children, with varying degrees of success.
Black fathers face unique challenges
In that, the great Black men of American history lock arms with brethren who won't win a Nobel Prize, advise presidents or serve on the U.S. Supreme Court.
"The historic and present reality of African-American fathers raising Black children in America has always been fraught with dual concerns — normal and the racially abnormal," said Keith Berry, dean of academic affairs for Hillsborough Community College's Ybor City campus. "Strengthening and shielding children from the potential pitfalls of American life while enlightening others in the process is equally a burden and gift."
Berry, himself a Black father who has both a master's degree and a doctorate in American history, noted that many of the Black men who would rise to become scholars and advocates took their early cues from their own fathers.
He pointed to famed historian John Hope Franklin, whose father, attorney Buck Colbert Franklin, had his law office on the second floor of a building in the Greenwood section of Tulsa, Oklahoma, made infamous in 1921 when it was burned down in a horrific race massacre.