‘This day means so much to us’: Greenfield community reflects on freedom at fifth annual Juneteenth celebration

GREENFIELD — Community members gathered on the Greenfield Community College lawn on Friday afternoon to reflect on what Juneteenth means to them.

Angela Campbell, GCC’s vice president of institutional mission, culture and climate, said GCC was excited to host the fifth annual Juneteenth celebration on campus for the first time, as Juneteenth is a day for learning history and reflecting on the cost of freedom.

“On freedom’s eve, Jan. 1, 1863, the first watch night services took place, and on that night, enslaved and free African Americans gathered in churches and private homes all across the country awaiting news that the Emancipation Proclamation had taken effect. At the stroke of midnight, their prayers were answered as all enslaved people in Confederate states were declared legally free,” Campbell said. “But not everyone in the Confederate territory would be immediately free. Freedom finally came two years later, on June 19, 1865, when some 2,000 Union troops arrived in Galveston, Texas.

“The Army announced that the more than 250,000 enslaved Black people in the states were free by executive decree,” she continued. “This day has come to be known as Juneteenth.”

Erin Anhalt, Greenfield’s chief of staff, described Juneteenth as America’s second Independence Day.

“Juneteenth is not just a Black holiday, it is an American reckoning,” Anhalt said. “It asks every single one of us, what does liberation actually look like? And who gets left out?”

Amilcar Shabazz, a University of Massachusetts Amherst professor of history and Afro-American studies, spoke on the Black power movement of the 1960s and 1970s. He said that freedom required additional efforts, over the years, to ensure Black people could make use of their freedom and civil liberties.

“Until Black people would empower themselves to actually go and register to vote, to vote and vote against all the hatred, to empower themselves to go to schools that were no longer segregated, to empower themselves to drink from the water fountain or the bathroom that had been reserved for whites only, those acts are just acts,” Shabazz said. “It takes the people feeling empowered by the laws that they helped to change to really make those changes meaningful.”

Wesley Jackson, CEO of Franklin County’s YMCA, added that to him, Juneteenth is about celebrating the future and the next generation.

“Juneteenth is a celebration of freedom, perseverance and resiliency — some of the traits that all youth need on a daily basis,” Jackson said. “I encourage all of you to please gravitate to a young person. Don’t tell them their future is tomorrow; their future’s today. They need you right now to steer them on the right path and to be the best individual they can possibly be.”

Traci Talbert, the racial justice community engagement director at the Franklin County Community Development Corporation and one of the organizers of this year’s Juneteenth celebration, echoed Jackson’s remarks.

“This day means so much to us, but I want us to really think past this day,” Talbert said. “How do we take this into tomorrow, into our future, into our communities and into our work every single day?”

Amid the remarks came performances by the Twice As Smart children’s choir and the reading of a proclamation from the Mayor’s Office declaring June 19 as Juneteenth in Greenfield. Talbert also asked attendees to celebrate Mpress Bennu, who started the Juneteenth celebrations in Greenfield five years ago.

Bennu added that Juneteenth is about community, togetherness, culture and change, and that Greenfield’s Juneteenth celebration is particularly special to her.

While she took a year off from planning the festivities, which this year were coordinated by the Franklin County CDC and its Welcoming and Belonging Group, Bennu plans to take the helm once again and announced that her nonprofit, Moving Mountains TSOP Inc., will be creating a Juneteenth subcommittee to plan and organize the celebration.

“Juneteenth to me is more than just a federal holiday. Juneteenth to me is personal. This is my baby,” Bennu said. “I started this, I nurtured it. I put my heart, my spirit, my feelings into it. … I was totally invested, not just in Juneteenth, but in the message behind it, and that was to bring the community together, and love and respect and unity.”