‘Juneteenth’ event celebrates freedom and embraces community – Roanoke Times

CHRISTIANSBURG In the foreground, six young people of African-American heritage read the history of Juneteenth.

In the background, two boys one white and one a child of color grinned as they occupied opposite ends of a playground seesaw. For a few seconds, one was ascendant. And then the other rose. The cycle repeated, accompanied by the sounds of delight.

In the foreground, Melvin Palmer, 9, read a poem titled We Rose, verse that he penned with assistance from his mother and brother. The poem began, From Africas heart, we rose, and included the line Survive we must, we did.

Juneteenth, a merging of June and nineteenth, celebrates the belated announcement in Texas on June 19, 1865, that all slaves are free. Union Army Maj. Gen. Gordon Grangers related order, announced in Galveston, came more than two years after Lincolns Emancipation Proclamation took effect for rebellious states and two months after the major Confederate armies surrendered.

According to one account, when Granger announced in Texas that slaves were free there were about 250,000 people in bondage in the Lone Star State. History suggests that many slaveholders resisted Grangers order. An essay by Henry Louis Gates Jr. reported that it was not uncommon for [the slaveholders] to delay until after the harvest the sharing of news about freedom.

Regardless, the date on which Granger communicated the order freeing slaves in Texas became embraced by many newly freed slaves as a day to commemorate.

Gates wrote, In one of the most inspiring grassroots efforts of the post-Civil War period, they transformed June 19 from a day of unheeded military orders into their own annual rite.

Over time, Juneteenth became a national celebration of emancipation from slavery.

Saturdays event, held at the Rosa Peters Childrens Playground in Christiansburg, was organized by the Montgomery County-Radford City-Floyd County Branch of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People.

Few of the adults attending Saturdays celebration knew anything about Juneteenth in their youth.

That was true of Corey Miles, 26, a native of Weldon, North Carolina, who volunteered to help emcee the event. Miles is pursuing a doctoral degree at Virginia Tech in Africana Studies, and his dissertation will focus in part on this nations disproportionate imprisonment of black men.

Miles was among several people attending the Juneteenth celebration who suggested emancipation for African-Americans remains a work in progress.

He said his family history lacks specific details about ancestors who were slaves. But he said his forebears did not flee the South during the so-called Great Migration, when millions of blacks moved to the North, Midwest and West to escape Jim Crow laws and to seek improved living and economic conditions.

Miles noted that Martin Luther King Jr. spoke about the promise embedded in the Declaration of Independence and U.S. Constitution that all Americans should have full access to the benefits of freedom.

I dont think were there yet, he said.

Several community organizations staffed information booths Saturday.

Rita Irvin, president of the NAACP chapter hosting the event, said a key theme for the day was collaboration to identify and support action-oriented solutions to issues ranging from health to social justice.

Andrae Hash staffed a booth for Virginia Organizing. He said he is kin to Nan Hairston, a celebrated civil rights activist in the New River Valley, and attributed his passion for working for social justice to the example she and others set.

Hash said the annual Juneteenth commemoration provides an opportunity both to mark a milestone in freedom and to identify the work that must continue to more fully establish a just society.

Saturdays event featured speakers, presentations, music, dance, food and more, including appearances by politicians courting votes at a park once created to provide a playground in Christiansburg for black children.