All tagged Juneteenth

Juneteenth, Then and Now

June 19 is Juneteenth, the anniversary of the day in 1865 when enslaved people in Texas finally learned that, two and a half years earlier, the Emancipation Proclamation had legally set them free. If regular Juneteenth commemorations have been held in Swarthmore, they have not been announced in the pages of this newspaper, which record observances and public celebrations of Memorial Day, the Fourth of July, Chanukah, Christmas, and Kwanzaa. I would like to change that.