Organizations
A Happy Juneteenth Celebrated in Suffield
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In The Suffield Observer’s September issue, Liz Warren, a leader of Suffield ABAR, wrote passionately about the significance of Juneteenth, the day chosen by African-Americans to celebrate the end of slavery in the United States — the day in 1865 when the last slave state, Texas, got the news that the Civil War was over, and President Lincoln’s 1863 Emancipation Proclamation became the enforceable law of the land. The news was delivered militarily when General Gordon Granger and his men marched into Galveston to be sure that the Texas army, which had successfully freed the state from Mexico, would understand that the Confederacy’s General Lee had surrendered to General Grant in April. Granger was a direct descendant of Launcelot Granger, an early settler in Suffield.) Juneteenth, now a national holiday on June 19, was celebrated publicly in Suffield for the first time this year, on a comfortable Saturday morning with a mixed group of about 100 at the bandstand on the Town Green. Liz Warren opened the program after everyone stood and sang the Black national anthem, “Lift Every Voice and Sing.” Then an enjoyable, educational, motivational medley filled the next two hours with music, readings, interpretive dancing, and poetry. The planned Witness Stone for Tamer had arrived in time to be exhibited during the jubilant event.
