Ansonia gears up to celebrate Juneteenth
ANSONIA — The city’s second annual Juneteenth celebration will feature more food, vendors and attractions plus music and entertainment and a little history too.
Valley Save our Youth is hosting the celebration June 18 at Gatison Park. The event will run from 1 p.m. to 4 p.m.
Len Duffus, the event organizer, said the holiday is needed now more than ever as a result of the continuing impacts of racism in the country. A mass shooting occurred at a Buffalo, New York supermarket located in a predominately Black community last month. Ten African Americans were killed and the shooter, a white man is now facing federal hate crime charges.
“We’ve come so far, but we have so far to go,” he said. “This is a new holiday, but it shouldn’t be a new holiday. This has been around for a long time, (since) two years after the Emancipation Proclamation.”
He said the struggle to get recognition for the day has been going on for years.
“So especially with the climate of the country right now, this is good to bring together the African American community in a celebratory fashion,” Duffus said.
Juneteenth, which is celebrated on June 19, commemorates the emancipation of enslaved African Americans in Galveston, Texas months after the end of the Civil War. The holiday was celebrated mostly in Texas for the first half of the 20th century, but the holiday become a nationwide celebration as a consequence of the Great Migration between 1910 and the early 1970s, when an estimated six million Black people moved out of the South in search of better job opportunities and to escape institutional racism.
People can learn about why the holiday exists and also, about the organization’s new teen center set to open on June 25.
But while Juneteenth is now widely celebrated in the state, Duffus said the event will also be a chance for people to have frank discussions about white supremacy.
“A lot of people are funny when we talk about racial conversations, especially revolving around slavery, critical race theory, people who think talking about American history is a bad thing,” he said. “We’re going to educate.”