Juneteenth on campus included contemplation and celebration

About 300 members of the campus community enjoyed Cincinnati State’s first celebration of the Juneteenth national holiday.

The campus celebration on June 16 featured food, craft exhibits, music, games, and more, as seen in photos below.

The celebration was planned by members of the College’s Justice, Access, Inclusion, Diversity & Equity (JAIDE) Council.

History Professor Daniel Anderson pointed out that Juneteenth, which became a federal holiday in 2021, is “the oldest nationally-celebrated commemoration of the ending of slavery in the United States,” as well as the first national holiday to be established since the creation of Martin Luther King Jr. Day in 1983.

Juneteenth (a shortened form of the phrase “June nineteenth”) commemorates the date June 19, 1865– about two months after the U.S. Civil War ended– when enslaved African-Americans in Galveston, Texas, were informed that President Abraham Lincoln had issued the Emancipation Proclamation about two and a half years earlier, abolishing slavery in the U.S.

Professor Anderson noted, “We must all remember that Juneteenth places all Black people at the intersection of the conversation about freedom and what it means in America.” 

“We must all remember that July 4th is about liberty, but it was an imperfect liberty, because slavery still legally existed in the nation.”

“All of us should celebrate both Juneteenth and July 4 because these are important moments in our shared history,” Professor Anderson said.