Kellie Carter Jackson

Fourteen years ago, the day before Thanksgiving, I lost my sister Tracie to breast cancer. She was 37, married, and the mother of three children. I can’t remember what happened the next day—what we ate or who even cooked. Everything was a blur. A couple of days after we laid Tracie to rest, my mother called me. William, my only brother, was being hospitalized. Doctors didn’t know what was wrong, but he couldn’t breathe.

In 2002 I was at the University of Iowa conducting research on the history of Emancipation Day celebrations in the state. I remember at one point being somewhat baffled by what Leslie Schwalm, the professor I was working with, had found: From 1865 to 1963, there were more than 200 Emancipation Day festivities in Iowa alone. I had always thought of the event as a Texas holiday.