MANCHESTER, NH – While Manchester is a more peaceful town in comparison with some others around the country right now, still the difficulties Black people face often occur behind closed doors. Such incidents have a tendency of falling beneath the public’s general consciousness. Whether these occur with law enforcement officers, business owners, or everyday citizens, the message at the city’s first Juneteenth recognition was clear: the country still has a long way to go.
Juneteenth, a mash-up of the words “June” and “Nineteenth,” was celebrated this year in front of the Hopknot on Elm Street. A sizeable crowd, among them Mayor Joyce Craig, gathered in the shade to eat gourmet pretzels, swill drinks and listen to various Black activists and community members share their experiences and stories.
While the mood was jubilant, even celebratory, vocalist Ms. Vee came on stage to sing Abel Meeropol’s poem, “Strange Fruit,” published in 1937 and recorded by Billie Holiday in 1939. The song is a protest against the lynchings of Black people in the south. As a result of releasing this song, the Federal Bureau of Narcotics began targeting Holiday. They finally got their chance to arrest her in the summer of 1959 as she lay dying in a New York hospital.
Her words, sung by a different voice, rang out low and somber tone. The memory of Abram Smith, Thomas Shipp, and James Cameron, lynched in Marion, Indiana, in 1930, as well as many other Black people who have been murdered in various cruel and inhumane ways, lay heavy just then. It was a sobering moment to realize that, despite all our technological advancements, all our knowledge and cleverness, Black people across the country are still getting hung from trees in what can only be described as acts of terror.
Mayor Craig was invited to speak at length. She read a resolution that declared June 19, 2020, as Juneteenth Day in Manchester. Various Black Lives matter activists in attendance celebrated at hearing this news. It was clear to everyone that a significant step forward had been made.
Tia Parker, an organizer of the event, strode about with ineffable confidence. She works with a vaudeville performing arts troupe called Lawless Libertines who often put on body-positive events involving women and queer individuals. Friday night she wore a black dress with a pair of fashionable sunglasses, and could easily have been mistaken for a high school teacher or college professor. She exuded intelligence and spoke with eloquence.
“I wanted to extend what I do with event producing and do community events,” Parker said. “Especially things that are really dear to me, such as Juneteenth. Juneteenth is a celebration of the end of slavery, but it’s more than that. It’s been an ongoing civil rights struggle, for equality for people of color in this country, and this for me is a reminder of that independence, but that we also have more work to do.”
Historical significance
Juneteenth, also known as Jubilee Day, Freedom Day, Liberation Day, or Emancipation Day, marks the official end of chattel slavery in the United States. The day remembered is June 19, 1865, when General Gordon Granger brought two thousand troops from the Union Army to Galveston, Texas, to announce both the end of the Civil War and the end of slavery in America.
While Abraham Lincoln signed the Emancipation Proclamation as an executive order in September 1862, making it law on the first day of 1863, the Confederacy with their own president, Jefferson Davis, and their own legislature, no longer viewed the laws promulgated by Washington D.C., legally binding to themselves.
Only when General Robert E. Lee surrendered to the Union Army at Appomattox County, Virginia in April 1865 did the civil war end. Over two months passed before the citizens of Texas received the news of a Union victory.
155 years after Granger’s announcement, the struggle for equal rights and fair treatment continues for many African-American citizens across America. People are routinely murdered, brutalized, and mistreated by police officers everywhere. Still, others are incarcerated at disproportionate rates, leading U.S. Senator Rand Paul to declare that mass incarceration is the “New Jim Crow.”
Toward the end of the event, Parker expressed a hope that Juneteenth would occur every year in Manchester, and that more people would attend next year than they did this year, as well. Activists from the Black Lives Matter movement also suggested showing up to smaller community events as well, as a show of support.