The words Juanta Griffin read aloud during an Oak Park village board meeting five years ago, from a Juneteenth Proclamation she co-wrote, resonates now more than ever.
“Juneteenth today celebrates Black freedom and achievement; as it takes on a more national, symbolic, and even global perspective, the events of 1865 in Texas are not forgotten…,” she read years ago. “It meant, ‘I see you as a people, not just a holiday, not just a culture. I see your pain.’”
The oldest nationally celebrated commemoration of the end of slavery in the United States, Juneteenth, also called Emancipation Day or Juneteenth Independence Day, observes June 19, 1865, when federal troops entered Galveston, Texas, to ensure all enslaved people there were freed. The Emancipation Proclamation, which freed enslaved people in the U.S. following the Civil War, was signed more than two years prior.
While Juneteenth commemorates the day in 1865, it’s also a reminder that the fight to maintain that freedom must continue.
With Juneteenth celebrations and commemorations getting underway this month, Griffin, executive director of Ase Productions Inc. — a not for profit company offering community events, educational workshops, and theatrical productions with a primary focus on the African Diaspora experience — reminds everyone that the idea of freedom should not be taken lightly. She points to so many of President Donald Trump’s orders which, she said, are aimed at changing the direction away from the civil rights focus of the past 60 plus years and erasing Black contributions and history.
Fatima Goss Graves, president of the National Women’s Law Center said in a USA Today news article last month, the pace of unraveling civil rights protections is unlike anything she’s seen in my lifetime.
“Freedom is my birthright,” Griffin said in a recent Wednesday Journal interview. “It’s not something that can be given. It’s something you’re born with. Unfortunately, here in America we have to fight to keep it. You see how quickly your freedom can disappear with just the flick of the pen, we can be deported or the laws that our ancestors died for can be erased.”
When people want to erase your history, they’re not erasing it to replace it with something better, she said.
“I know my history,” Griffin said. “I’m from an ancient people and didn’t just arrive here. My history doesn’t start on the shores of this continent which means I can stand so much taller and keep going.”
Former Oak Park Village Clerk Vicki Scaman, Oak Park’s current village president, co-wrote the Juneteenth proclamation with Griffin.
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