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Monday, February 24, 2025

Americans mark Juneteenth with parties, events and quiet reflection on the end of slavery

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615 days ago
20230619

Amer­i­cans across the coun­try this week­end cel­e­brat­ed June­teenth, mark­ing the rel­a­tive­ly new na­tion­al hol­i­day with cook­outs, pa­rades and oth­er gath­er­ings as they com­mem­o­rat­ed the end of slav­ery af­ter the Civ­il War.

While many have treat­ed the long hol­i­day week­end as a rea­son for a par­ty, oth­ers urged qui­et re­flec­tion on Amer­i­ca’s of­ten vi­o­lent and op­pres­sive treat­ment of its Black cit­i­zens. And still oth­ers have re­marked at the strange­ness of cel­e­brat­ing a fed­er­al hol­i­day mark­ing the end of slav­ery in the na­tion while many Amer­i­cans are try­ing to stop parts of that his­to­ry from be­ing taught in pub­lic schools.

“Is #June­teenth the on­ly fed­er­al hol­i­day that some states have banned the teach­ing of its his­to­ry and sig­nif­i­cance?” Au­thor Michelle Duster asked on Twit­ter this week­end, re­fer­ring to mea­sures in Flori­da, Ok­la­homa and Al­aba­ma pro­hibit­ing an Ad­vance­ment Place­ment African Amer­i­can stud­ies course or the teach­ing of cer­tain con­cepts of race and racism.

Mon­day’s fed­er­al hol­i­day com­mem­o­rates the day in 1865 when en­slaved peo­ple in Galve­ston, Texas, learned they had been freed — two years af­ter the Eman­ci­pa­tion Procla­ma­tion was is­sued dur­ing the bloody Civ­il War.

On June­teenth week­end, a Ro­man Catholic church in De­troit de­vot­ed its ser­vice to urg­ing parish­ioners to take a deep­er look at the lessons from the hol­i­day.

“In or­der to have jus­tice we must work for peace. And in or­der to have peace we must work for jus­tice,” John Thorne, ex­ec­u­tive di­rec­tor of the De­troit Catholic Pas­toral Al­liance, said to the con­gre­ga­tion at Gesu Catholic Church in De­troit.

Stand­ing be­fore paint­ings of a Black Je­sus and Mary, Thorne said June­teenth is a day of cel­e­bra­tion, but it al­so “has to be much more.”

It was im­por­tant to speak about June­teenth dur­ing Sun­day Mass, the Rev. Lorn Snow told a re­porter as the ser­vice was end­ing.

“The strug­gle’s still not over with. There’s a lot of work to be done,” he said.

Most Black Amer­i­cans agree, ac­cord­ing to a re­cent poll. A full 70% of Black adults queried in a AP-NORC poll said “a lot” needs to be done to achieve equal treat­ment for African Amer­i­cans in polic­ing. And Black Amer­i­cans suf­fer from sig­nif­i­cant­ly worse health out­comes than their white peers across a va­ri­ety of mea­sures, in­clud­ing rates of ma­ter­nal mor­tal­i­ty, asth­ma, high blood pres­sure and Alzheimer’s dis­ease.

Al­though end-of-slav­ery cel­e­bra­tions are new in many parts of the coun­try, in Mem­phis, where the slave trade once thrived, the June­teenth hol­i­day has been cel­e­brat­ed since long be­fore it be­came a des­ig­nat­ed fed­er­al hol­i­day in 2021. The Ten­nessee Leg­is­la­ture passed a bill ear­li­er this year mak­ing it a state hol­i­day, as well.

Fes­tiv­i­ties there in­clude a mul­ti-day fes­ti­val in­clud­ing food, mu­sic, arts and crafts, and cul­tur­al ex­hi­bi­tions in a tree-lined park in the city’s med­ical dis­trict. The Mem­phis park once held an eques­tri­an stat­ue and the grave of slave trad­er and Con­fed­er­ate gen­er­al Nathan Bed­ford For­rest. The stat­ue and the body were moved in re­cent years.

Mem­phis is home to the Na­tion­al Civ­il Rights Mu­se­um lo­cat­ed at the site of the old Lor­raine Mo­tel, the for­mer Black-owned ho­tel where the Rev. Mar­tin Luther King Jr. was killed in 1968. The mu­se­um is of­fer­ing free ad­mis­sion on Mon­day to mark the hol­i­day. At the mu­se­um, vis­i­tors can hear record­ed speech­es from civ­il rights lead­ers in­clud­ing King, Fan­nie Lou Hamer, Medgar Evers and oth­ers.

Ryan Jones, the mu­se­um’s as­so­ciate cu­ra­tor, said June­teenth should be cel­e­brat­ed in the U.S. with the same em­pha­sis that Ju­ly 4 re­ceives as In­de­pen­dence Day.

“It is the in­de­pen­dence of a peo­ple that were forced to en­dure op­pres­sion and dis­crim­i­na­tion based on the col­or of their skin,” Jones said.

The June­teenth hol­i­day, Jones said, should al­so be viewed as more than a day when peo­ple at­tend par­ties and cook­outs. In fact, he said, it is a time to re­flect on the past.

“It ac­knowl­edges the sac­ri­fices of those ear­ly civ­il rights vet­er­ans be­tween World War I and World War II, and of course in the mod­ern so­ci­ety, the protests, the demon­stra­tions, the non-vi­o­lence, the march­es,” Jones said.

As Amer­i­cans gath­ered to mark the hol­i­day, it wasn’t with­out in­ci­dent. In a Chica­go sub­urb late Sat­ur­day night, one per­son was killed and 22 were in­jured in a shoot­ing still be­ing in­ves­ti­gat­ed Sun­day by po­lice. One wit­ness said the par­ty in the park­ing lot of a Wil­low­brook, Illi­nois, strip-mall was a June­teenth cel­e­bra­tion.

The White House re­leased a state­ment Sun­day af­ter­noon, say­ing: “The Pres­i­dent and First La­dy are think­ing of those killed and in­jured in the shoot­ing in Illi­nois last night. We have reached out to of­fer as­sis­tance to state and lo­cal lead­ers in the wake of this tragedy at a com­mu­ni­ty June­teenth cel­e­bra­tion.”

The hol­i­day ob­ser­vance con­tin­ues Mon­day with Vice Pres­i­dent Ka­mala Har­ris ap­pear­ing on a CNN spe­cial with mu­si­cal guests in­clud­ing Miguel and Char­lie Wil­son.

Schools and fed­er­al build­ings will be closed Mon­day.

De­troit (AP)

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