Juneteenth Observance Arrives Amid US Reckoning With Racism
Many Juneteenth observances celebrating the emancipation of African American slaves more than a century and a half ago were shifted to the internet on Friday due to the coronavirus, though street marches and “car…
Many Juneteenth observances celebrating the emancipation of African American slaves more than a century and a half ago were shifted to the internet on Friday due to the coronavirus, though street marches and “car caravans” were planned in several major U.S. cities.
Organizers said the occasion holds particular significance this year – despite limitations imposed by the pandemic – as it comes amid a reckoning with America’s troubled racial history following last month’s death of George Floyd under the knee of a Minneapolis police officer.
Weeks of mounting demands to end police brutality and racial bias in the U.S. criminal justice system are sure to animate rallies expected in cities coast to coast, including New York, Washington, Philadelphia, Atlanta, Chicago and Los Angeles.
In Texas, where Juneteenth originated, Lucy Bremond oversees what is believed to be the oldest public celebration of the occasion each year in Houston’s Emancipation Park, located in the Third Ward area where Floyd spent most of his life.
This year a gathering that typically draws some 6,000 people to the park, purchased by freed slaves in 1872 to hold a Juneteenth celebration, will be replaced with a virtual observance.
“There are a lot of people who did not even know Juneteenth existed until these past few weeks,” Bremond said.
Juneteenth, a blend of June and 19th, commemorates the U.S. abolition of slavery under President Abraham Lincoln’s 1863 Emancipation Proclamation, belatedly announced by a Union army in Galveston, Texas, on June 19, 1865, after the Civil War ended.
Texas officially made it a holiday in 1980, and 45 more states and the District of Columbia have since followed suit. This year, a number of a major companies declared June 19, also known as Emancipation Day or Freedom Day, a paid holiday for employees.
Union dockworkers at nearly 30 ports along the West Coast planned to mark the occasion by staging a one-day strike.
But much of the focus of the 155th annual observance will take place on social media, with online lectures, discussion groups and virtual breakfasts, to help safeguard minority communities especially hard hit by the pandemic.