June 17,2024
Juneteenth, June 19th, was declared a Massachusetts state holiday in 2020 and a federal holiday in 2021. The number of commemorations and offerings for celebration in community have grown over the years. This year, we note the variety of events in Boston and the Episcopal Church, and local churches, which are described in the links listed below our signatures.
Our column this week focuses on how two people of color have described and thought about Juneteenth. Kevin Young, poet and the director of the Smithsonian Institution National Museum of African American History and Culture since 2021, called the holiday a mix of family, freedom, music, and food (his Louisiana family saw ice cream as its way of feeding the body as well as the soul). For Young, Juneteenth also means history and thinking about the legacy of slavery. The news of Juneteenth was met with both jubilation and reflection on the “delays of freedom.”
We also turn to Texas native Annette Gordon-Reed, Loeb Professor at Harvard, for another perspective. Known for her earlier books on Jefferson and the Hemings, Gordon-Reed wrote her short memoir and reflection, On Juneteenth (New York: Liveright) in 2021. She expresses the hope that this book achieves the proper equilibrium between love of a place and lending a critical eye to the difficulties of that place’s history. She also eloquently describes the connections between her family history and her study of social history:
“Abstract notions of the United States, of Virginia—of Texas—for me, at least, don’t capture why places are worthy of love. When asked…to explain what I love about Texas, given all I know of what has happened there—and is still happening there—the best response I can give is that this is where my first family and connections were…Texas is where my mother’s boundless dreams for me took flight. It’s also where I learned to think that people could, and should, try, in whatever ways they can, to make life better for others alive today and for those to come. That this feeling –this thought—came to me in a place that was once so very difficult, so full of good things, and so full of potential, shaped my thinking in important ways.” (p. 140-141)
Yours in continuing to discover a fuller history of Juneteenth,
–Mary Beth Clack, Mary Blocher, Cindy Coldren, Pat Krol, Liz Levin
Boston Events: Overview
Embrace Boston’s 2024 suite of offerings, including keynote with Isabel Wilkerson
Museum of Fine Arts offerings
Celebration at Holy Spirit Mattapan
ECUSA “Juneteenth and the Call to Remember”
ECUSA on Juneteenth 2024
WBUR’s “7 Juneteenth events Happening around Boston this week”
–Published in This Week @Emmanuel Church June 19, 2024