Juneteenth, Clean Slate, and the Promise of Real Freedom

Author’s Note: As I was writing this update, a Mississippi family became the focus of national attention, and they’re now grieving the loss of their one-year-old baby, Kohen Wiley, who was killed during a police encounter following a reported accusation of theft. This heartbreaking loss is a painful reminder that freedom isn’t just the absence of enslavement or confinement — it’s the presence of opportunity, dignity, and the ability to build a future, and too often, that freedom is taken away from Black people in America before they even have a chance to pursue it. Our hearts go out to everyone feeling Kohen’s loss.

Juneteenth is a celebration of freedom, resilience, and progress. But it’s also a reminder that legal freedom and genuine opportunity have not always arrived at the same time.

Earlier this year, The Clean Slate Initiative (CSI)’s team traveled to Montgomery, Alabama, to visit the Equal Justice Initiative’s Legacy Sites. That visit wasn’t a staff retreat, and it wasn’t just a simple learning opportunity — it was a chance to better understand the history that has shaped the system we work to change every day. For many of us, the experience was both powerful and deeply personal.

Seventy-five percent of CSI’s team are directly impacted, meaning we have had an arrest or conviction record ourselves or have supported a close friend or family member who does. More than half of our staff are people of color. We know that the threads between systemic inequities and the legal system are woven tightly together, but walking through the Legacy Sites offered an opportunity to deepen our understanding of how those threads were formed and how they continue to shape lives today.

To Create Fairer Systems, We Have To Understand Our History

The Legacy Sites tell a difficult but necessary story: throughout American history, the legal system has frequently been used as a mechanism for control and exclusion rather than rehabilitation and restoration.

Ending the practice of slavery didn’t abolish the history of slavery. The Legacy Sites follow that line from enslavement, through Jim Crow, and into the modern era, using art, historical documentation, and immersive storytelling to illustrate how the consequences of that history are still visible today. 

It’s been more than 160 years since June 19, 1865, the day that enslaved people in Galveston, Texas, finally learned they were legally “free” — but that promise of freedom remains incomplete. Black Americans are still disproportionately arrested, prosecuted, and incarcerated. Black people in America make up just 14 percent of the national population, but we make up 36 percent of the prison and jail population, and 30 percent of all arrests in 2025.

Entire communities have experienced the effects of over-policing and over-criminalization, often resulting in long-lasting roadblocks to rebuilding someone’s life, and those barriers don’t disappear when a formal sentence ends.

Records Create Lifelong Punishment for Black Americans

Nearly half of all Black adults — 15 million — carry the weight of a past arrest or conviction record that can continue to appear in background checks even decades after someone has served their time and remained crime-free, limiting access to jobs, housing, professional licenses, and educational opportunities. Even records that never resulted in a conviction can create lasting obstacles.

These records are not the same as slavery, segregation, or racial terror. But they exist within a broader history of systems that have denied people full participation in society long after they have paid their debt or, in some cases, despite never being found guilty at all.

Clean Slate Expands Access to Freedom 

Record sealing alone can’t undo centuries of injustice, but it can help address one of the ways that inequality continues to manifest today.

Record sealing allows eligible records to be hidden from most public background checks while remaining accessible to law enforcement and certain government agencies when authorized by law. When a record is sealed, people gain a fairer opportunity to compete for jobs, housing, education, and other essentials that help families thrive.

Increasingly, states are adopting Clean Slate policies that automate the record sealing process. Instead of requiring people to navigate complicated paperwork, pay fees, or hire attorneys, automated record sealing puts eligible records on the path to being sealed automatically when legal requirements are met.

By allowing eligible records to be sealed through an automated system, states can help ensure that people who have earned a second chance are able to access the opportunities that come with that fresh start. These policies help reduce the lasting harms of over-criminalization and mass incarceration while creating pathways for people to fully participate in their communities and the economy.

Progress Starts with Reflection

Our visit to Montgomery reinforced our resolve to continue building a world where second chances aren’t the exception, they’re the norm. It also taught us another important lesson: history isn’t something we study once and leave behind. Organizations working to change systems have a responsibility to examine the legacy of inequity that shaped today’s realities. We can’t change the past, but understanding that history can help us build better policies for the future.

For me, that understanding is strengthened by lived experience. I know what it feels like to carry the weight of a record. I know what it means when a door closes because of something in your past. And I know how powerful it can be when someone sees your potential instead of your pain.

That’s why I believe so strongly in Clean Slate policies. They create opportunity after accountability, and they help ensure that people are judged by who they are today, not solely by what appears on a background check.

This Juneteenth, we honor the struggle for freedom that generations of Black Americans have endured. We celebrate progress while acknowledging the work that remains. And we continue to commit ourselves to building a future where opportunity is not limited by the mistakes of the past, where second chances are real, and where freedom includes the ability to move forward with dignity.

If you’ve experienced the impact of a record yourself, consider sharing your story. Stories from directly impacted individuals help policymakers, employers, and communities better understand why second chances matter. They remind us that behind every policy debate is a person working to build a better future.