8/13/2023 0 Comments Galveston daily news obituary![]() Now there is a movement to use the holiday as an opportunity for activism and education, with community service projects aimed at addressing racial disparities and educational panels on topics such health care inequities and the need for parks and green spaces. Edward Markey, D-Mass., and had 60 co-sponsors, a show of bipartisan support as lawmakers struggled to overcome divisions that are still simmering three years later. The national reckoning over race ignited by the 2020 murder of George Floyd by police helped set the stage for Juneteenth to become the first new federal holiday since 1983, when Martin Luther King Jr. HOW HAVE JUNETEENTH CELEBRATIONS EVOLVED OVER THE YEARS? Lee was one of the people standing next to Biden when he signed Juneteenth into law. Soon, celebrities and politicians were lending their support. In 2016, the “little old lady in tennis shoes” walked through her home city of Fort Worth, Texas and then in other cities before arriving in Washington, D.C. The 96-year-old had vivid memories of celebrating Juneteenth in East Texas as a child with music, food and games. Opal Lee, a former teacher and activist, is largely credited for rallying others behind a campaign to make Juneteenth a federal holiday. Hundreds of companies give workers the day off. Juneteenth is a paid holiday for state employees in Texas, New York, Virginia, Washington, and now Nevada as well. states now hold celebrations honoring Juneteenth as a holiday or a day of recognition, like Flag Day. It began with church picnics and speeches, and spread as Black Texans moved elsewhere. The holiday has also been called Juneteenth Independence Day, Freedom Day, second Independence Day and Emancipation Day. It’s a blend of the words June and nineteenth. Events include concerts, parades and readings of the Emancipation Proclamation. And the next year, the now-free people of Galveston started celebrating Juneteenth, an observance that has continued and spread around the world. Slavery was permanently abolished six months later, when Georgia ratified the 13th Amendment. This involves an absolute equality of personal rights and rights of property between former masters and slaves, and the connection heretofore existing between them becomes that between employer and hired labor.” 3, which said: “The people of Texas are informed that, in accordance with a proclamation from the Executive of the United States, all slaves are free. Gordon Granger and his troops arrived in the Gulf Coast city on June 19, 1865, more than two months after Confederate Gen. News that the war had ended and they were free finally reached Galveston when Union Maj. That’s why, you know, we celebrate that day.” “I think now they say they worked them, six months after that. “Old master didn’t tell, you know, they was free,” Smalley said. Laura Smalley, freed from a plantation near Bellville, Texas, remembered in a 1941 interview that the man she referred to as “old master” came home from fighting in the Civil War and didn’t tell the people he enslaved what had happened. Even then, some white people who had profited from their unpaid labor were reluctant to share the news. Although President Abraham Lincoln’s Emancipation Proclamation freed the slaves in 1863, it could not be enforced in many places in the South until the Civil War ended in 1865. For generations, Black Americans have recognized Juneteenth, but it only became a federal holiday two years ago.The celebrations began with enslaved people in Galveston, Texas. The holiday commemorates June 19, 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. “Is #Juneteenth the only federal holiday that some states have banned the teaching of its history and significance?” author Michelle Duster asked on Twitter, 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. 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. 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. (AP) - 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. ![]()
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