A flag raising, music and a visit from the governor highlighted Juneteenth celebrations in Springfield, Massachusetts.
Wednesday’s ceremonies at City Hall featured Springfield’s Vanessa Ford performing in a packed room as officials moved most of the flag-raising indoors due to the heat.
Kicking off the event was 11th Hampden Representative Bud Williams. The Springfield lawmaker’s own efforts to recognize the Juneteenth holiday led to Massachusetts making it a state holiday a year before it was recognized as a federal holiday in 2021.
Before he spoke, Williams welcomed in the Peter Brace Brigade - a group of Black Civil War re-enactors, named after a member of the 54th Massachusetts Volunteer Infantry Regiment, one of the first Black regiments created to fight in the Union army.
The representative and former Springfield city councilor detailed the history of Juneteenth – a holiday long-recognized in the Black community that traces its origins to 1865, when even after the Emancipation Proclamation, slavery continued in territories and other pockets of the nation.
That included Texas, where emancipation enforcement arrived that June, sparking celebration. The Constitution’s 13th Amendment abolishing slavery was ratified later that year – more than two years after the initial proclamation.
“We have this huge celebration -1863. Two-and-a-half years later, in Galveston, Texas, the Texans, which - didn't consider themselves part of the Union, they said ‘To hell with it,’ until General Granger marches in to Galveston, two-and-a-half years later, to free 250,000 slaves. 250,000 enslaved people, two-and-a-half years later - that's a great victory,” he said.
Williams also touched on the earliest forms of reparations that followed the end of the Civil War, including the well-known promise of “40 acres and a mule” to the formerly enslaved – and how those efforts were undone following the assassination of President Lincoln.
Noting the fight for reparations continues, Williams also mentioned the “10 Million Names” project – an effort “dedicated to recovering the names of the estimated 10 million men, women, and children of African descent who were enslaved in pre- and post-colonial America,” according to the initiative’s website.
“Stay tuned – it’s a big project in Boston - I’m going to file an amendment - to help us get some money, so all of us can be made whole,” Williams said. “Because when you come and don't have a name, don't know where you come from, don't know your history, you don't know your ancestors - it makes it very difficult for you to matriculate through society.
Following the representative, Mayor Domenic Sarno issued an official Juneteenth proclamation for the occasion.
“-therefore I, Domenic J. Sarno, Mayor of the City of Springfield, do hereby proclaim Wednesday, June 19, 2024, as ‘Juneteenth Day’ in the City of Springfield and I strongly encourage all of our residents not only to be aware of this event, but to know about this event and to treat each other respectfully.”
Congressman Richard Neal of the 1st district also spoke. The former mayor mentioned Springfield’s history in the abolitionist movement, at one point becoming a major stop for the Underground Railroad.
He also invoked the memory of a former House colleague and civil rights leader.
“John Lewis, who I sat next to for 25 years on the Ways and Means Committee, would always say ‘We couldn't have done it alone,’” Neal said. “It was good people of good will, honorable and of good nature, that helped bring about an end to one of the great stains in the history of the world, the issue of slavery in America.”
Among the last speakers was Governor Maura Healey, who earlier attended a Juneteenth flag-raising in Boston.
“It's an honor to be here today as we honor the past, and we embrace the present, including all the challenges and crises that we're presented with as a state, as a nation,” the governor said. “But, I think it's up to us to choose those challenges and crises as opportunities to draw on the strength of ancestors, and to continue to fight a great and prosperous path forward - so thank you, God bless the City of Springfield and great Commonwealth of Massachusetts. Happy Juneteenth!”
The couple hundred residents and electeds then made their way out for the flag-raising, where a drumline made up of Libertas Academy students performed
Also part of the celebrations - musical performances with a Juneteenth theme by the Springfield Symphony Orchestra at neighboring Symphony Hall.
