By Kevin McLaughlin
On June 18th, IHS will be celebrating Juneteenth, a holiday established to celebrate the abolition of slavery due to the Emancipation Proclamation. June 19th, 1865, marks the day that Union soldiers arrived in Texas to inform the enslaved people that they were now free (June + 19th = Juneteenth).
IHS will officially celebrate Juneteenth for the first time this year. After a day off from school on Thursday, June 17th, students will return to school on Friday to observe Juneteenth in a program that is still taking shape.
On October 14, 2020, governor Andrew Cuomo signed into law legislation designating Juneteenth as an official public holiday in New York. Earlier in the year, Cuomo had issued an executive order recognizing Juneteenth as a holiday for New York State employees.
Juneteenth isn’t currently a nationally recognized holiday, but is celebrated substantially in states such as Virginia, Illinois, and Georgia. The holiday has gained more recognition since the killings of African Americans such as Breonna Taylor and George Floyd, and the resulting protests.
Former slave Felix Haywood in the Federal Writers’ Project: Slave Narrative Project in 1936 recalled Juneteenth: “Everybody went wild. We all felt like heroes and nobody had made us that way but ourselves. We was free. Just like that, we was free.”
In 2015, former President Barack Obama spoke on the importance of Juneteenth.
“But Juneteenth has never been a celebration of victory, or an acceptance of the way things are. Instead, it’s a celebration of progress. It’s an affirmation that despite the most painful parts of our history, things do get better. America can change.”
