Brewer rings in 1st official Juneteenth celebration following designation as federal holiday

Sawyer Loftus |June 19, 2021 Read the full article here

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Maine’s first Juneteenth celebration, since President Joe Biden declared the day as a federal holiday on June 17 was held Friday at Chamberlain Freedom Park in Brewer. … The celebration — held a day before June 19 — was led by James Varner, president of the Maine Human Rights Coalition and co-founder of the Greater Bangor NAACP, at the park that is a memorial to the Underground Railroad used to escape slavery in the South. Flanked by Brewer Mayor Michele Daniels and a crowd of about 20, Varner took time to explain the significance of making Juneteenth a federal holiday to the largely white crowd. “I’m thankful and I hope you are feeling the joy and excitement this brother is feeling here today. And I know Dr. Martin Luther King is singing,” Varner said to the crowd. “I know he’s happy also.”

Make Juneteenth Great Again: The Caucasians’ Guide to Celebrating Juneteenth

Michael Harriot | June 18, 2021

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Now that Juneteenth is a federal holiday, we created a CRT-free educational curriculum to help colonizer Americans resist the urge to gentrify this celebration.

Hold up, white people.

Now that you have officially discovered Juneteenth,* you need to become familiar with the traditions, customs and history lest you succumb to the Caucasian colonization gene and gentrify this auspicious celebration. Before hopping on the Juneteenth bandwagon, you first need to realize that you have no say in driving the narrative about this special day.

Left to your devices, Juneteenth might become a day when you parade around in African headwraps drinking Hennessy just like y’all celebrate Mexican Independence Day on May 5 by donning sombreros and taking shots of American tequila.** So, to protect the legacy of this special day, The Root created this handy-dandy guide to help you become familiar with existing in spaces you don’t own.

Welcome to the Juneteenth Project.

Organizers ‘elated’ at annual Juneteenth event

There was something extra to celebrate this year.

Brian Sullivan |June 18, 2021 Read the full article here

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Maine’s first Juneteenth celebration, For almost two decades, Brewer has been the home for an annual Juneteenth celebration. There was something extra to celebrate this year. Just after Juneteenth became a federal holiday, there was a sense of vindication in the air. “I’m elated. I’m excited. I’m happier than I’ve ever been.” That’s what Maine Human Rights Coalition President James Varner told the gathered crowd Friday. He says he’s been hosting Juneteenth events for more than 50 years. This is the 16th year in Brewer’s Freedom Park. “I can’t put into words how I feel,” said Varner. “We are finally accepted and doing the right thing making this a federal holiday.” “Everybody should be accepted, and everybody should have a reason to celebrate,” said Michele Labree Daniels, Mayor of Brewer. “Juneteenth is a big reason to celebrate that it’s finally got the recognition that it needs and maybe other people understand how important it really was in 1865.”

A Man From Bangor Enlightened Me About Juneteenth

DJ Fred | June 18, 2021

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An unexpected visitor that day set me straight. I had no idea what Juneteenth was all about when I was told that James Varner was at the front desk here at the radio station. I also had no idea who he was or what he was here for, a situation that our receptionist seemed to take great pleasure putting me into on a regular basis. Mr. Varner told me that he was President of the Maine Human Rights Coalition, an organization to undo racism and discrimination here in our state. He asked if we could get information on air and online about a gathering that day that would celebrate “Juneteenth” at Joshua Chamberlain Park here in Brewer. Curious about what it was all about, I asked him to follow me upstairs to the studio. While June 19th has been called a variety of things over the years it became a Federal holiday just this week, as our President and Vice President signed a new law making Juneteenth an official holiday, a day that all can now celebrate empowerment, equality, and diversity, for good reason. Take a few moments to listen to Mr. Varner in the video recorded 4 years ago and maybe you’ll learn something new like I did that day.

See other coverage of James Varner’s Juneteenth work here: Maine Public, WABI, News Center Maine, NCM, Fox Bangor

What really happened on Juneteenth — and why it’s time for supremacists and their sympathizers to surrender

Robin Washington | June 18, 2021

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the oft-repeated tale of Union soldiers arriving in Galveston, Texas, on June 19, 1865 to inform enslaved African Americans that they were free is pure fiction. Not because they weren’t legally freed 2-½ months earlier when Confederate Gen. Robert E. Lee surrendered at Appomattox. Or technically freed 2-1/2 years before when President Lincoln issued the Emancipation Proclamation, declaring slavery null and void in areas under rebellion, very much including Texas.

Rather, I now know, the big lie is the incessantly repeated canard that Galveston’s po’ ignant Black folks didn’t know they was free, and that U.S. Major Gen. Gordon Granger had to read a proclamation to spell it out for them.

In fact, they most certainly did know.

“We knowed what was goin’ on in [the war] all the time,” Felix Haywood, who was enslaved in Texas, is recorded as saying in an account by historian Gregory P. Downs.