Juneteenth celebrates the end of chattel slavery in the United States. But over 150 years later, discriminatory public policies have prevented African Americans from closing the racial wealth divide in this country they helped build.

During the early 1900s through 1970, millions of African Americans migrated from the deeply segregated agricultural South to the industrial, less segregated Midwest and North. They hoped that escaping from Jim Crow states to cities with plentiful industrial jobs would create better economic opportunities for themselves and future generations.