June 19, 2026

Dear Emancipators,

I write to you in celebration of two historic days that are related like siblings.  

Today’s federal holiday marks the day of Jubilee for my ancestors. A day when Union troops entered Galveston Bay two months after the Civil War effectively ended with Robert E. Lee’s surrender at Appomattox. With Galveston Bay enslavers defiantly still holding people in bondage, Union troops announced the emancipation of this Texas town’s enslaved people on June 19, 1865. That joyous, that sweet, that inaugural Juneteenth.

Today we are also celebrating another announcement: The relaunch of The Emancipator. We have identified July 2, 2026— on the eve of the nation’s 250th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence—as our relaunch date. 

The Emancipator is an award-winning nonprofit newsroom that provides reporting and analysis about the structure of racism and antiracist efforts to abolish it. The Emancipator works in the revolutionary spirit of antislavery newspapers that covered the scourge of slavery and efforts to abolish it. 

We seek the truth about racism and report it to the public. We hold racist power accountable to the people. We platform underrepresented voices, undervalued experts, and underreported injustices. We inform readers and viewers about racist and antiracist ideas, the structural and violent forces that perpetuate inequity, and the antiracist policy solutions that can create a safe, inclusive, and equitable democracy for us all.

As you may have heard, we announced last year that The Emancipator was moving to a suitable, supportive, and sustainable publisher: the newly established Institute for Advanced Study at Howard University. Founded by abolitionists in 1867 and led in its early years by trustees like Frederick Douglass, Howard is known as the Mecca, located in the heart of Washington, D.C. 

At our new Institute for Advanced Study, we plan on convening experts and students from across disciplines and fields to produce greater knowledge and public understanding of racism.

At The Emancipator, we’ve spent this past year laying a foundation for growth and impact at our new home. 

We acquired funding from generous supporters–and you can donate to our work here. 

We developed a plan to ensure the long-term fiscal sustainability of The Emancipator. 

We redesigned our website. 

We maintained longstanding relationships and built new partnerships —all of which help make our newsroom possible.

We spent months pressing our previous university to emancipate The Emancipator and officially transfer the publication over to us. 

We rehired key colleagues from our previous team and reimagined their roles to advance our renewed mission.

We’re bringing on new colleagues — including an Investigative Correspondent, Breaking News Correspondent, and a Video Editor — positions that reflect our new focus on investigative reporting, expert analysis, and breaking news while rigorously fact checking our reporting and analysis and packaging our content in multimedia forms.

Investigative Reporting. In this time when racism is swelling and increasingly being hidden and denied, we need investigative reporters and professional researchers who can systematically uncover racist policy, practices, and violence.

Expert Analysis. In this time when their books are being banned, their credibility is being attacked, and their expertise is being refuted, we need to platform and learn from the experts on racism.

Breaking News. In this time when the mainstream media routinely misinforms with headlines, framing, and sourcing that spreads racist narratives, or timidly defers to power, we need news that is reported accurately and courageously every single time.

Multimedia. In this time when equitable access to information is especially critical to fighting racism, we need to meet people in whatever form they prefer news: short and long-form written pieces, videos, audio and podcasting, social media feeds, and events.

At our new publisher, with our new vision, with our talented and committed new staff, with research assistance from the Institute for Advanced Study — and with your support — we are truly excited to announce on this Juneteenth the relaunch of The Emancipator in two weeks. 

Though there were enslaved people emancipated later, Juneteenth is commonly viewed as the final line of the greatest American story: the abolition of chattel slavery. 

A story written by a radical hope that the impossible was possible. 

A story carried by a multiracial cast of protagonists who were labeled “extreme” and “divisive” and “anti-American” and “unpatriotic” for demanding an immediate end to the terror that was slavery. 

A story mauled by antagonistic enslavers and their financiers and their customers who collectively reigned as perhaps the wealthiest and most powerful oligarchy in the world. An oligarchy that had been trying to expand their dominion over enslaved Black labor in the south, over free White labor nationwide, over Chinese immigrant labor out west, over the ancestral lands of Native nations in the territories. An oligarchy that had largely controlled the press, the courts, the military, many northern state legislatures, all southern state legislatures, the Congress, and the White House.

Until it did not.

It is our time to do the impossible again. It is our time to finish the Reconstruction of the United States that began in the 1860s and again in the 1960s. 

It is our time to build human solidarity across region, race, ethnicity, gender, sexual orientation, and religion if we are to build antiracist democracy.

It is our time to overcome the divisive, anti-American, unpatriotic extremists who are opposing our demands for the immediate end to the terror that is racism.

It is our time to defeat the most powerful oligarchy in the world again. And the antiracist newsroom will be as central as the antislavery newspaper.

The journalist writes the first draft of history. The journalist writes the first draft of the American story. It was the journalist—beginning with The Emancipator, the first antislavery newspaper established in 1820—that wrote the greatest American story. 

At the same time, with powerful enslavers hovering, pro-slavery propaganda cloaked as journalism filled newspapers, writing against the greatest American story. Similarly, today, with powerful authoritarians hovering, racist propaganda cloaked as journalism fills mainstream newsrooms, pushing narratives against the next great American story.

But the next great story—the abolition of racism—will be told. First by antiracist journalists. We are committed to it at The Emancipator. Just as the greatest American story was first told by antislavery journalists.

Our new tagline: From antislavery to antiracist journalism.

To The Emancipator, returning on July 2, 2026.

To Emancipation!

In Solidarity and Struggle,

Ibram X. Kendi

Co-Founder

The Emancipator