City of Monona issued the following announcement on June 15.
On Friday, June 18, the City of Monona will celebrate Juneteenth with a ceremony and community peace walk starting at City Hall. The event will start at 1:00 p.m. with Monona’s Court Clerk, Toya Harrell, singing the first verse of the Black National Anthem. The event will be a community peace walk in celebration of Juneteenth to show support for Black sisters and brothers who live in and around Monona. The event will end by 2:00 p.m.
After the singing and event welcome, attendees will walk around Winnequah School leading to the path around the pool and will head back to City Hall. After all return back to City Hall, people will be invited to make remarks. Everyone is invited to attend. Walkers are encouraged to make signs for the walk. Ideas for signs could include quotes from Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., Maya Angelou, Rosa Parks, and other Black leaders.
According to Elizabeth Nix at History.com, “Juneteenth (short for “June Nineteenth”) marks the day when federal troops arrived in Galveston, Texas in 1865 to take control of the state and ensure that all enslaved people be freed. The troops’ arrival came a full two and a half years after the signing of the Emancipation Proclamation. Juneteenth honors the end to slavery in the United States and is considered the longest-running African American holiday.
“The Emancipation Proclamation issued by President Abraham Lincoln on January 1, 1863, had established that all enslaved people in Confederate states in rebellion against the Union “shall be then, thenceforward, and forever free.”
But in reality, the Emancipation Proclamation didn’t instantly free any enslaved people.”
Original source can be found here.
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