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Chicago celebrates Juneteenth
Chicagoans celebrated Juneteenth all over the city, with music and even a basketball tournament in the Pullman neighborhood.
CHICAGO - Chicagoans celebrated Juneteenth all over the city, with music and even a basketball tournament in the Pullman neighborhood.
But most importantly, the history of Freedom Day was shared.
"Every single day, I am also proud to be the great-great-granddaughter of William and Margaret Stephens of Sunflower County, Mississippi, who lived under the brutality of slavery until Lincoln’s Emancipation Proclamation," said Illinois Lieutenant Governor Julianna Stratton.
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The Emancipation Proclamation said that all persons held as slaves within the rebellious states are, and henceforward shall be free — that was in 1863.
However, it was not until 1865 when slaves in Galveston, Texas learned of their freedom for the first time.
"We turned those slaves loose. Those slaves had absolutely nothing," said James Meeks, Salem Baptist Church pastor. "Then, America turned around and we paid the former slave owners for the slaves that they lost … instead [of] the people who were slaves and that subsidized America with 350 years of [free] labor — [they] got nothing."
Illinois made Juneteenth a state holiday last summer, before the federal government did.
This year was the first official observance of Juneteenth as a national holiday.
"This holiday is a reminder that our nation’s most abominable sin is not lightyears in the past, but rather merely a century-and-a-half ago," said Illinois Governor JB Pritzker. "We mark the progress that we have made and also the work we must do."