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This past weekend, people around the country celebrated the burgeoning Juneteenth holiday. Juneteenth is a now an official holiday in Texas and a cause for celebration and reflection on history in other states. Commentator Meri Danquah puts a premium on remembering that kind of history.

NPR's Robert Siegel talks to history professor Peggy Pascoe of the University of Oregon in Eugene about U.S. laws that were the nation's longest lasting form of legalized racial discrimination. For three centuries, states had laws of various sorts barring marriage between people thought to be of different "races." They lasted halfway into the 20th century when a Supreme Court decision overturned the last ones. We compare and contrast the fears behind those laws with fears against same-sex marriage today.