That holiday, Juneteenth, is today. It celebrates the abolition of chattel slavery in the U.S., marked by June 19, 1865—the day Maj. Gen. Gordon Granger informed slaves in Galveston, Texas, that they were free. It was the final major enforcement of the Emancipation Proclamation in Confederate territory, more than two years after President Abraham Lincoln had signed it.

It is not an exaggeration to say that slavery epitomized state-sanctioned violence. The practice permitted someone to completely extract the freedom of another. Slave codes codified this into law, greenlighting torture and family separation, and the Fugitive Slave Act of 1850 required states—even free ones—to capture and return those who escaped. These people were deprived of any semblance of individual liberty, much less property. Because they were the property.