Black TV creators helped make Juneteenth famous

Los Angeles Times

This week, President Trump boasted to The Wall Street Journal that he was responsible for making Juneteenth famous. "I did something good: I made Juneteenth very famous," he said. "It’s actually an important event, an important time. But nobody had ever heard of it." But it was a different Donald, Donald Glover, whose 2016 "Juneteenth" episode of Atlanta caused many people to Google the June 19 holiday that marks the end of slavery in the United States, says Lorraine Ali. A year later, Black-ish came out with its "Juneteenth" musical episode that drew attention to the date’s symbolic importance. "The mere existence of these two half-hour productions is tangible proof of how the push for diversity onscreen has changed history — or at least made it more representative and honest," says Ali. "Black representation behind the camera, with producers, production companies, writers’ rooms and actors who have purchase in the characters they play, has resulted in high-profile scripted content that illuminates a seismic event that‘s been downplayed or altogether buried by white history books. And by the current White House." Ali adds: "TV is certainly not a paragon of representation, but thanks to Black creators like Glover and Black-ish’s Kenya Barris, this Juneteenth marks the first time most networks have paused to commemorate a day — and hundreds of years of history and countless individual Black stories — previously invisible to American media."