Detroit (AP) – Americans across the country are celebrating June 19 this weekend, marking a relatively new national holiday. with cookouts, parades and other gatherings as they celebrate the end of slavery after the Civil War.
While many treated the long holiday weekend as a cause for a party, others encouraged quiet reflection on America’s often violent and oppressive treatment of its Black citizens. And others spoke of the irony of celebrating a federal holiday marking the end of slavery in the country as many Americans try to stop parts of that history from being taught in public schools.
“Si #Juneteenth the only federal holiday that some states prohibit from teaching its history and significance?” Author Michelle Duster asked on Twitter this week, referring to measures in Florida, Oklahoma and Alabama that prohibit an Advancement Placement African American course from studying or teaching certain concepts of race and racism.
Monday’s federal holiday commemorates the day in 1865 when enslaved people in Galveston, Texas, learned they were freed — two years after the Emancipation Proclamation was issued during the bloody Civil War.
On the 10th week of June, a Roman Catholic church in Detroit is devoting its service to encouraging parishioners to examine the lessons from the holiday.
“To have justice we must work for peace. And to have peace we must work for justice,” John Thorne, executive director of the Detroit Catholic Pastoral Alliance, said to the congregation of Gesu Catholic Church in Detroit.
Standing in front of paintings of a Black Jesus and Mary, Thorne said Juneteenth is a day of celebration, but it also “should be more.”
Important to speak about Juneteenth during Sunday Mass, Rev. Lorn Snow told a reporter as the service ended.
“The struggle is still not over. There is a lot of work to be done,” he said.
Most Black Americans agree, according to a recent poll. A full 70% of black adults asked in an AP-NORC poll says “much” needs to be done to achieve equal treatment for African Americans in policing. And black Americans suffer worse health outcomes than their white peers on a variety of measures, including maternal mortality rate, asthma, high blood pressure and Alzheimer’s disease.
Although celebrations of the end of slavery are new in many parts of the country, in Memphis, where the slave trade once flourished, the June 19th holiday has been celebrated since before it became a fixed one. which is a federal holiday in 2021. The Tennessee Legislature passed a bill earlier this year making it a state holiday, as well.
The 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 housed an equestrian statue and the grave of slave trader and Confederate general Nathan Bedford Forrest. The statue and body have been moved in recent years.
Memphis is home to the National Civil Rights Museum located on the site of the old Lorraine Motel, the former Black-owned hotel where Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. in 1968. The museum offered 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 US with the same importance that July 4 receives as Independence Day.
“This is the freedom of a people who have been forced to suffer oppression and discrimination based on the color of their skin,” Jones said.
The Juneteenth holiday, Jones said, should also be seen as more than just a day when people attend parties and cookouts. In fact, he said, it is time to reflect on the past.
“It recognizes the sacrifices of those early civil rights veterans between World War I and World War II, and of course in modern society, the protests, the demonstrations, the nonviolence, the marches,” said Jones.
As Americans gathered to mark the holiday, there was no incident. In a suburb of Chicago on Saturday night, one person died and 22 were injured in a shooting that was still being investigated last Sunday by the police. A 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 last night’s shooting in Illinois. We are reaching out to state and local leaders in the wake of this tragedy at a community Juneteenth celebration.
The holiday celebration continued 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 on Monday.