By Leah Clark,
Contributing Writer,
Festivities were in full swing on Wednesday, June 18 as hundreds of children flocked to the Medgar Evers Library for live entertainment, music, games, food trucks, and special guests in celebration of Juneteenth.
Hosted by the Jackson/Hinds Library System, “Juneteenth: A Freedom Celebration” brought attendees from across the metro-Jackson area for a day packed with events.
“The library should be a community hub. It should be a place of knowledge, access to information, but also a place to celebrate freedom and to learn about your history,” said Jeanne Williams, executive director of the Jackson/Hinds Library System.
Williams, a Mississippi native, was announced in May as the library system’s newest executive director. Her career spans 25 years of library work in Mississippi and Washington.
Juneteenth, which is on Thursday, June 19 this year, is a holiday celebrating the end of slavery in the United States. Also known as Freedom Day or Emancipation Day, the holiday refers to the events of June 19, 1865, in Galveston, TX. when the last Black slaves were ordered free by Union troops.
The earliest celebrations of the holiday can be traced to the following year as it spread across Southern Black communities. The Jackson/Hinds Library System’s Juneteenth celebration has been around for over 15 years. However, amidst the racial reckoning and protests in 2020 after the police killing of George Floyd, Juneteenth rose to national prominence. It became a federal holiday in 2021.
According to Alice Tisdale, a community advocate and publisher emeritus of the Jackson Advocate, events like this help solidify the importance of the holiday, especially for children.
“Anytime you can celebrate yourself and the accomplishments of your race is a wonderful opportunity,” Tisdale said. “We have to empower children to look around. Not just to see the playground, but to see the books and want to open those books up because that’s where their history lies.”
Attendees were treated to free food, games, face painting, arts & crafts, musical selections, dramatic presentations, educational talks, and speeches. Children also had the chance to sit in on story time with Dr. Ebony Lumumba, Asst. Professor of English at Jackson State University.
While the celebration was a family event, many attendees were participants from local churches, summer camps, community centers, and daycares throughout the metro Jackson area.
For Samantha Vincent, a teacher at Little Explorers Daycare on N. State St., she said bringing her students to the Juneteenth celebration proves it is never too early to teach children about their history.
“If they don’t know their past, they don’t know their future,” Vincent said. “It starts here. This is the foundation. You have to start early, so it can already be instilled, and you can apply it to their education when they go further in life.”
With such a large turnout for the event, Williams said she hopes to continue events like the Juneteenth celebration to cement the library as a community hub.
“These buildings should be a point of civic pride and I think it will take building some strong relationships and partnerships with all of the partners and stakeholders involved,” she said. “There have been some hard times, and we need to remind everyone that freedom is something to celebrate. It’s a rare thing, and libraries are a rare place that upholds freedom,” state Williams.
Anne Sanders, branch manager of the Medgar Evers Library said , “We had over 800 people to show up today. This is the largest Juneteenth celebration we have ever experienced at the library.” She went on to say that she is very appreciative of all the sponsors and volunteers that came out to help as well as the staff at Medgar Evers Library. She said they worked so hard to make it a success. James Hampton is one Sanders said really worked hard in putting everything together. Hampton stated, “It is such an honor to work with so many dedicated and diligent individuals as well as a pleasure to see the community come together and witness an event like we had here at the library in celebration of Juneteenth.”
Sponsors included Magnolia Grill, Sweet & Associates, Mary Church Terrell, National Park Service, The Mississippi Link, Dash for It, LLC, The Jackson Advocate, Brown, Bass & Jeter Attorneys, and Jackson State University, just to name a few.
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