Local government officials and Gainesville residents gathered in the new City Hall Plaza Wednesday morning for a flag-raising ceremony to mark the start of a month of Juneteenth celebrations.
This will be Gainesville’s sixth annual celebration of the “Journey to Juneteenth.” The event has been called “A Season of Freedom, Strength and Unity.”
Gainesville equal opportunity director Zeriah Folston began the kickoff event with introductions, and Mayor Harvey Ward welcomed attendants to the celebration.
Following the introductions, the crowd stood to sing a chorus of “Lift Every Voice and Sing,” a song by writer and civil rights activist James Weldon Johnson. The singing, combined with the general talkative and friendly air of the event, seemed to convey the event’s proposed purpose: to celebrate.
Jacquelyn Collins, a 75-year-old Gainesville local and current board member for The Cotton Club Museum and Cultural Center, sat up front at the event, singing along with the rest of those in attendance and clapping for each speaker.
“We celebrate every day our blackness, but to have other people recognize the accomplishments for Black people, that's just a plus for us,” Collins said.
When the singing subsided, Gainesville City Commissioner Cynthia Chestnut continued the discussion about the importance of Juneteenth and the value of celebrating for the entire month, rather than a single day.
Juneteenth is a way to celebrate the past, present and future of African American communities, Chestnut said, recognizing both struggles and achievements.
Florida Emancipation Day falls on May 20, which recognizes the day the state proclaimed freedom for enslaved people in 1865. Juneteenth, the day slavery ended on a national level, falls nearly a month later on June 19.
The majority of emancipation celebrations in Florida take place on Juneteenth, despite the state’s own emancipation day. Gainesville chooses to celebrate both days, filling the month between them with events.
Kali Blount, a 69-year-old retired registered nurse, is working to set up book clubs about African American history. He said celebrations of emancipation were taking place decades before the first official celebration, which only occurred in Gainesville six years ago.
“It wasn't unknown,” Blount said. “It just wasn't communitywide.”
Alachua County poet laureate E. Stanley Richardson performed a spoken word reading of his poem “The Promise” to continue the event. The poem discusses the devastating effects of slavery on African Americans, and Richardson’s performance brought the emotions of the work to life. The reading was met with resounding applause from the audience.
Mangyne Vivian Filer, the chair of the Cotton Club Museum and Cultural Center, spoke on the importance of recognizing the past and moving toward a better future for Black Americans.
Filer listed the many achievements of prominent figures in the Black community, including George Washington Carver’s work in agricultural science and Elijah McCoy’s many inventions. She highlighted the Black community as a group full of innovation.
This sentiment flowed throughout the event, with many speakers highlighting the importance of recognizing slavery and ensuring the public continues to fight its effects.
Clarence Collins, a 76-year-old retired Gainesville resident, said the Juneteenth celebrations are just the beginning of the changes necessary for equality.
Because “[Black] history has been hidden and under-told for so many years,” he said, it's vital to keep working toward better education on these subjects, especially in schools.
Following a proclamation by Mayor Ward and a prayer led by Bishop Christopher Stokes, the event closed with a flag raising. Students from Caring and Sharing Learning School, an elementary charter school, helped raise the Juneteenth flag in front of City Hall.
The act was met with a standing ovation from the crowd.
The flag raising was the first of many events to take place over the next month, including an all-day celebration on Saturday at the Cotton Club Museum and Cultural Center, a film festival at the Hippodrome June 6 and a celebration on Juneteenth set to take place in Bo Diddley Plaza.
Contact Brandy Sumner at bsumner@alligator.org.
Brandy Sumner is an anthropology and English junior and this summer's music and performance reporter. This is their first semester working at the Alligator. In their free time they enjoy playing guitar, reading and writing.
