Pittsfield — June 19, 1865, two months after Confederate General Robert E. Lee surrendered in Appomattox, Va., Union General Gordon Granger arrived in Galveston, Texas to inform enslaved African-Americans that the Civil War ended and they were free. It was two and a half years after President Abraham Lincoln put into effect the Emancipation Proclamation.
For years, June 19 has been an annual holiday celebrated by Black people throughout the United States commemorating the end of slavery in the United States. The name of the holiday, Juneteenth, is a combination of the month of June and the date, 19. In June 2021, President Joseph R. Biden signed a law making Juneteenth a federal holiday.
On Sunday, June 18, one day before the official federal holiday, NAACP Berkshires held its second annual Juneteenth event at Durant Park.
The event included a parade from Persip Park to Durant Park, a vendor fair with local nonprofit organizations, live musical performances, and speeches from local officials.
“What goes through my mind on Juneteenth? Independence. Black independence, finally,” NAACP Berkshires Dennis Powell said. “In one of his famous speeches, Frederick Douglass asked ‘What is Fourth of July to the Negro?’ That is because, for many years on Independence Day, there were still slaves. A lot of the Civil Rights Act had not even passed. Juneteenth truly represents freedom.”
As part of the event, NAACP Berkshires awarded scholarships to local students. “One of the reasons why we give out scholarships to local college-bound students is that nothing speaks of freedom more than an education,” Powell said. “We really want to assist them and make sure that they go further in their journey to educate themselves. Unfortunately, as we celebrate today, we have to be mindful of all of the freedoms that we’re now losing again. This includes the woman’s right to her own body, the right for people to read books, to educate themselves, and to educate their children. All of this is being rolled back and I see ourselves going backwards instead of forwards. We can’t, because we have come so far.”
Powell said that when it comes to celebrating Juneteenth, an emphasis should be placed on educating young people about the past. “I’m 77 and I’m going to be checking out soon,” Powell said. “That is why we have to encourage young people to start using their voices to be heard. To me, Juneteenth is also about ‘We the People.’ Because we the people are the ones who are responsible for what is happening today. I do have hope for the future, and in fact I live on hope. I’m out here every day fighting with hope. But again, we have to start taking action because hope is not enough. When it comes to standing up against losing our freedoms, we have to understand that it is we the people who govern the government, and not the government governing us.”
“We are here today to celebrate something that is sacred in this country, and that is liberty and freedom,” NAACP Berkshire member Kamaar Taliaferro said. “Those are the bonds that we agree to uphold with one another. That’s what this day represents and that’s why we are marching today, to let our city know about this. We’ve come from a long lineage of a Black tradition of believing in the promise of this country, even when it isn’t shown to us. We’re stepping with our ancestors and our allies by marching in this parade.”
At the event, there were several children’s activities, including a bounce house and an arts table from TG’s Clubhouse, an art enrichment program.
“Juneteenth is a time for celebration and remembrance of our country’s history,” Alfred “A.J.” Enchill said. Enchill is the founder and president of the Berkshire Black Economic Council, which was one of the organizations at the event.
“It is a time for reflection about where we’ve come as Black people,” Enchill said. “This Juneteenth event is important because we get to highlight all of the great community collaborations we have in the Berkshires, and we also highlight the progression we have towards racial and economic justice. We have so much to be proud of and to be grateful for.”
State Sen. Paul Mark, who attended the event, told The Berkshire Edge, “What goes through my mind on Juneteenth is ‘We the People’ and that the U.S. Constitution, until it applies to everybody, doesn’t mean anything.” He said, “On Juneteenth, people should be thinking about freedom and independence. They should be thinking about how liberty must be available to all of us. That the rights of the Constitution, the rights of the Bill of Rights, have to apply to everyone. The principles of the Declaration of Independence, until everyone feels them, don’t really mean a thing. We still have a lot of work to do. We’ve had a lot of down points in our history and we’ve had a lot of moments of greatness. I think working together we can at some point, realize the ideals this country was actually founded upon.”
