We recently wrote about Carver’s past Juneteenth celebrations and this year’s controversy.

Short for “June Nineteenth,” Juneteenth honors the end of slavery across the United States when enslaved Black people in Galveston, Texas finally received news of their liberation—two and a half years after the Emancipation Proclamation. 

Today, the world is more aware of the significance of Juneteenth and is joining in on the commemoration that signifies the arrival of the news in Texas of emancipation from slavery in the United States.

Locally, Juneteenth will be recognized at 5 p.m. today at Veteran's Park. The event will include speakers, music and art, and attendees are asked to wear a mask to protect from the coronavirus. For more information, click here.

Gov. Andrew Cuomo signed an executive order on Wednesday making Juneteenth a holiday for state employees, and many companies and organizations have done the same. A group of senators are proposing to make Juneteenth a national holiday.

The National Archives on Thursday located what appears to be the original handwritten “Juneteenth” military order informing thousands of people held in bondage in Texas they were free. The decree, in the handwriting of a general’s aide, was found in a formal order book stored in the Archives headquarters building in Washington. It is dated June 19, 1865, and signed by Maj. F.W. Emery, on behalf of Union Maj. Gen. Gordon Granger. “The people of Texas are informed that, in accordance with a proclamation from the Executive of the United States, ‘all slaves are free,’ ” the order reads. This order was issued as U.S. troops gradually reasserted Union control over the defeated South in the spring of 1865, flying the American flag and bearing news of President Abraham Lincoln’s 1863 Emancipation Proclamation.

It took a long time for the freedom message to get to Galveston. And it's taken a long time for the importance of Juneteenth to fully enter the American consciousness. Today, it seems to have finally arrived.

Typically, African American families across the nation celebrate this day with a cookout, a parade, or a community festival such as what we have organized at the Carver Community Center.

But in 2020, as the coronavirus ravishes black America disproportionately both physically and economically, and as police brutality continues to devastate black families, Juneteenth for many people, regardless of race, is a day of protest.

Today, from coast to coast there will be marches and demonstrations of civil disobedience, along with expressions of black joy in spite of an especially traumatic time for our nation.