Latest news with #FreedomMarch
Yahoo
19 hours ago
- Politics
- Yahoo
Juneteenth celebration in Portsmouth: 'We have a lot to resist and a lot to renew'
PORTSMOUTH — Playing joyful anthems, The Leftist Marching Band led the Freedom March into the African Burying Ground Memorial Park to begin the annual celebration of Juneteenth. Hundreds followed gathering in the hot sun to honor the city's Black ancestors and history, renew its vow to remember its heritage accurately, and celebrate the freedom whose fragility is better understood today than ever in recent memory. The Black Heritage Trail of New Hampshire's annual Juneteenth ceremony on Thursday, June 19 was a special one: It marked the 10th anniversary of the city's establishing the memorial park to honor the once-forgotten Black ancestors buried there and included its rededication. The memorial park is sacred ground in Portsmouth. Dedicated in May 2015, it memorializes more 200 people of African descent who were buried in the area of Chestnut Street during the 1700s. In the 1800s, as the city grew, the site was built over and forgotten. In 2003, the burial site was uncovered during work on an infrastructure project. DNA testing confirmed the bodies found were of African descent and had been enslaved in the city. Learning the site's history, the city created a memorial to honor it. 'These are things I didn't learn in school, and I grew up here,' said Portsmouth Assistant Mayor Joanna Kelley, after listing the city's now-known Black historical moments. 'This place was on maps for hundreds of years and then it disappeared from them.' She said it took hundreds of years to find the African Burying Ground again. 'The fall of democracy starts with erasing a map,' she said. Kelley was joined by Sen. Maggie Hassan, Rep. Maggie Goodlander, Portsmouth Mayor Declan McEachern, BHTNH Executive Director JerriAnne Boggis and other officials as she cut a red ribbon with large gold scissors to rededicate the memorial park. Earlier in the ceremony, Boggis welcomed those in attendance. 'This is New Hampshire. Look around you,' she said. 'Many of you have been with us this week on a sacred journey of remembering, of resistance and renewal. We have a lot to resist and a lot to renew.' She noted how the park's 'sacred ground, the final resting place of over 200 of our ancestors, had once been built over, covered up and erased.' 'It's going to take all of us, working together, with our feet on the ground,' Boggis said. 'To create the change we want to see and the America we want to be.' Tara Conner of South Berwick, Maine, brought her young children to the Juneteenth ceremony 'because I want to them to be really well-educated in our history so we can learn from it and do better next time.' Leah Conte, who was also there with her family from South Berwick, said, 'I feel like it's such an important part of Portsmouth history that needs to be recognized and remembered,' 'It's important to embrace the beautiful diversity Portsmouth has and has had for a long time,' said Sandra Khin, a Portsmouth native who now lives in Los Angeles. She attended with her two kids, her mother and her sister. 'It's an important holiday celebrating the final emancipation of enslaved people and it still remains an ongoing struggle.' Roza Anthony came to Portsmouth from Stowe, Massachusetts, with her son Dante 'because I'm raising a White man and it's my responsibility that he respects and knows our history, and has an understanding of it,' she said. 'I need him to know how to move in the world in a way that is kind, thoughtful and taking care of people.' The Rev. Robert Thompson began the ceremony with a prayer and a traditional pouring of a libation to pay tribute to Black ancestors. He asked the crowd to imagine what it must have been like for the enslaved people in Texas who found out they'd been freed two years after the fact, after other slaves were free, on that first Juneteenth. 'America takes work … the dream of America, the idea that despite our differences, all can be one. That claim of democracy that inspires the whole world, it takes work to realize it,' he said. 'To celebrate the freedom of everyone in the nation, not just some … That's the intricacy of America.' The Freedom March to the memorial park before the ceremony began in Kittery, crossed the Memorial Bridge and continued through the city to the park, organized by The Seacoast African American Cultural Center, Green Acre Baha'i Center of Learning, and Seacoast NAACP. After the ceremony and park rededication, the traditional African drumming and dance group Akwaaba Ensemble took the celebration to an energetic and joyful climax. At points, Akwaaba dancers led members of the crowd in group dances with many unable to resist the beat of the drums. In a first for the annual ceremony, a Community Dance to the viral song 'Boots On The Ground' concluded the ceremony in a synchronated dancing flash mob of community members that filled the memorial park. 'We must not be scared to wear our pride on our sleeves, on our shirts, on our hearts,' Kelley said. 'We have to be louder than the silence that is put upon us. This is not a black and white issue. It is every color in between. Our brothers and sisters are being held illegally for what? For wanting to live the American Dream.' Hassan said her father, a veteran who fought at the Battle of the Bulge, used to ask her often 'What are you doing for freedom today?' She said these days she is often asked 'What can I do?' by citizens. 'Right now, words are the most powerful tools we have. Words matter, the Declaration of Independence matters, our voices and our votes matter. But progress is not a straight line.' Rep. Maggie Goodlander thanked the crowd for gathering. 'You can't fake showing up and you can't fake showing up together,' Goodlander said. 'We get strength from this place. We are what we remember.' This article originally appeared on Portsmouth Herald: Juneteenth in Portsmouth: 'We have a lot to resist and a lot to renew'
Yahoo
24-03-2025
- Politics
- Yahoo
'Segregation and Democracy Don't Mix': The 1963 Freedom Marches in downtown Nashville
Ain't gonna let nobody turn me round, I'm gonna keep on a-walkin', keep on a-talkin', marchin' down to freedom land. Ain't gonna let segregaton turn me 'round, turn me 'round … It was the early spring of 1963, Saturday, March 23, and again on Saturday, March 30, to be exact when a group of anti-segregation demonstrators led by Civil Rights activist John Lewis staged a "Freedom March" through the streets of downtown Nashville protesting the refusal of several businesses to desegregate their lunch counters. "Everyone must join in the protest against segregation before we can clean up Nashville and make it a city without bias," said the now-late Kelly Miller Smith Sr., who at the time was the president of the Nashville Christian Leadership Council and pastor of First Baptist Colored Church (now First Baptist Church, Capitol Hill). He added that the "Freedom March" was designed to emphasize that it was a "people's cause and not just a leader's cause." On those two Saturdays in 1963, the demonstrators, mostly local college students – 85 on March 23 and approximately 60 on March 30 – marched through the downtown area dressed neatly and carrying signs, some of which read: "Segregation and Democracy Don't Mix," 'Make Nashville Great, Desegregate," "Does Brotherhood Include Segregation?" 'Sacrifice for Freedom, Christ Did," and "We Want Justice to Come to Nashville." The demonstrators stopped in front several businesses, the B&W Cafeteria, Cross Keys Restaurant, the Krystal, Tic Toc Restaurant and Wilson-Quick Drug Company, all of which had been scenes of sit-in demonstrations in the past because of their racial discrimination practices. The demonstrations were orderly, however, John Lewis, who at the time was chair of the Student Central Committee of the NCLC, and in 1987 would be sworn in as a member of the U.S. Congress from Georgia, said on March 23 that the group was pelted with eggs by several white youths who passed in an automobile near what was then 18th Avenue (now D.B. Todd Boulevard) and Jefferson Street. No one was injured. Almost three years earlier, in April 1960, a significant number of Nashville's downtown business lunch counters began to desegregate after then Nashville Mayor Ben West said in a meeting with protestors following the bombing of prominent Civil Rights Attorney Z. Alexander Looby's North Nashville home that he believed the city's lunch counters should be open all people. That followed organized student sit-demonstrations which were started in Nashville in February 1960 an effort to desegregate downtown lunch counters. The students, both Black and white, had been trained in non-violent resistance. Some were even attacked by white agitators, but they had been taught not to fight back. The 'Freedom March'' in Nashville carried over into the spring of 1964 against those few businesses that refused to serve all people. But that ended in July 1964 when the U.S. Congress passed the 'landmark civil rights and law that outlaws discrimination based on race, color, religion, sex and national origin.'' Marching has not just been confined to Nashville over the years when it comes to the fight against social injustice. People have marched in Memphis, Knoxville, Selma and Birmingham. They've marched on Washington, and even in Belfast, Northern Ireland, and many other places. Dwight Lewis is a former reporter, editor and columnist for The Tennessean. This article originally appeared on Nashville Tennessean: Freedom March anniversary: A look at the 1963 Civil Rights marches
