Doleman Black Heritage Museum holds 3-day Juneteenth celebration
More than 50 people at University Plaza in Hagerstown on Friday evening kicked off a three-day Juneteenth celebration hosted by the Doleman Black Heritage Museum.
Alesia Parson McBean, the museum's project director and former Hagerstown city council member, said there is no way to measure the impact of the national holiday.
"All we do is ... we create the environment for that," McBean told The Herald-Mail in an interview. "We're not solving any of the crises of the world with this festival. What we're doing is we're honoring ourselves and our ancestors who survived all that history."
President Abraham Lincoln issued the Emancipation Proclamation to free enslaved African Americans in secessionist states, but enslaved people in Galveston, Texas, did not learn of their freedom until years later.
On June 19, 1865, is when word of emancipation finally reached them in Galveston. Juneteenth commemorates this time.
On June 17, 2021, President Joe Biden signed legislation making Juneteenth a federal holiday.
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This is the second year the Doleman Black Heritage Museum has hosted a Juneteenth celebration. The Rev. Don Marbury, pastor of the Ebenezer AME Church, served as the emcee, speaking of not only the events of Juneteenth, but also about the history of racism in America — citing the murder of George Floyd in 2020.
"The important thing to remember is that slavery, that oppression, that putting one's knee on the back of someone's neck until they expire, is a sin," Marbury said. "We are in a battle against principalities, against evil and darkness in high places, and we cannot forget that in our dealings with one another.
"We've got to love and love hard enough."
Many people in the community shared quotations from famous abolitionists and influential Black American figures such as Frederick Douglass and Langston Hughes. McBean said the purpose of this segment of the event was to educate.
"We want our white contemporaries to get involved because we're honoring abolitionists ... they weren't all Black," McBean said. "That's why the quotes ... it had to resonate with each one of them. We're going to continue to do this exercise for as long as we have to."
McBean said she hoped for the county to get involved and take over the organization of Juneteenth events for the community in the future.
This article originally appeared on The Herald-Mail: Juneteenth celebrated in Hagerstown with weekend slate of events
