Today is Juneteenth, marking the day when the slaves of Texas finally learned of the Emancipation Proclamation. Commemoration of the day has spread far beyond Texas, and I wish we’d replace Martin Luther King’s birthday on the holiday calendar with Juneteenth. The objection that making MLK Day a national holiday puts him up with Jesus Christ and George Washington is legitimate, even if it was disingenuous on the part of some. But there obviously is a need in our national holidays for a day to celebrate the emancipation (from both slavery and Jim Crow) of black fellow-countrymen, not just as a black thing, but as an American thing. A celebration with roots in history, that has developed and spread spontaneously, is infinitely preferable to picking the birthday (in January, no less) of a single man.