| The writer Ralph Ellison labored for decades over the novel “Juneteenth,” the follow-up to “Invisible Man,” his landmark début. Published in 1952, “Invisible Man” won the National Book Award the following year, and Ellison became the first African American author to receive the prize. For the next forty years, Ellison worked on “Juneteenth,” the story of a small boy of ambiguous background who grows up to become a seemingly white, unquestionably racist U.S. senator. Hundreds of pages of the manuscript burned in a 1967 fire, and the book remained incomplete at the time of Ellison’s death, twenty-seven years later. In 1999, five years after Ellison died, The New Yorker published “Mr. Movie-Man,” a lightly abridged chapter from the long-awaited novel. “Juneteenth” was crafted by Ellison’s executor from a sprawling manuscript, and takes its name from the holiday we celebrate today, which marks the liberation of more than a quarter of a million enslaved Black people in Texas—the last such group to be freed after the end of the Civil War. In “Juneteenth,” an African American minister raises the future senator, and his memories, as channeled by Ellison, alternate with those of his adoptive child. We wish you reflective reading and a happy, meaningful holiday. | 
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