OIB friend Doug Wade who owns Wade’s Dairy on Barnum Avenue urges support of Juneteenth Day on Saturday.
Bridgeport is a diverse city that has its fair share of challenges, but it is also the home for many who are seeking and achieving the American dream. The Juneteenth celebration is a national event that honors the sanctity of personal dignity that came with the end of slavery in the United States of America. On June 19th, 1865, the U.S. Army marched into Galveston, Texas and freed the last African Americans that remained enslaved. This date became a holiday celebration for the African American community and has been celebrated ever since as Juneteenth day.
Please join this freedom celebration in downtown Bridgeport at noon time on Saturday, June 8th. A wonderful parade of proud people will march, sing and dance through the streets of downtown Bridgeport. Bring your friends, children and anyone who believes that the American dream of opportunity exists for all people for all. The parade will end at McLevy Green where there will be a fun time for all.
I’ll be there, will you join me?
Doug, at one time the Juneteenth parade was about honoring the sanctity of personal dignity that came with the end of slavery in the United States of America. When the name was changed to include the Caribbean in the only Black celebration in American history it deluded the sanctity of the holiday that you so eloquently spoke about.
How dare George Mintz president of the Bridgeport chapter of the NAACP change the name and dilute the importance of this historic day in Black American history. It’s bad enough that white America ignored Black American history in text books and makes it seem as if American history is separate from Black history, but it defies credulity that a supposed Black man would subscribe to this blasphemous behavior. Is there any wonder that the local NAACP is a joke in the eyes of most Black people in Bridgeport. This is a damn shame and I for one as past Juneteenth Parade Marshall will never attend this watered down version of the Juneteenth Parade.
Thank you George Mintz for taking the time to assure that a parade will be held this year. Thank you also for being the person who first communicated the story of Juneteenth to this older white man who had never before heard the story. For more than seven years I have repeated this story to people of all colors as part of honest American history that was never shared in the school rooms where I learned as a youth. And thank you, Doug Wade, for being regularly supportive of multiple attempts in the City of Bridgeport and surrounding towns to help create opportunities for sisters and brothers of diverse skin colors to reach new opportunities.
The City of Bridgeport charges parade sponsors for officer overtime, and though I do not know the exact expenses, I have a sense that they are considerable. By the way, this is the parade that Captain Mark Straubel, suddenly retired this past year from the Bridgeport Police Department, referenced negatively in racial texting reported in the CT Post. The NAACP was quoted this week on a front page article about Police Department investigative laxness in not pursuing a fuller and more prompt set of facts. Donald, I did not hear any black, white or other color person laughing at this NAACP response as some joke. Did you?
PERSONALLY, As a white man, so late in life an active member of the local NAACP and a student of the stories from slavery, through emancipation, into a failed reconstruction, continuing abuse and injustice in subsequent time, isn’t this a time to come together and stand for American rights as citizens to share the fullest story with the young? Or is it a time to further divide the entire community into weaker, smaller, and angry with each other groups that cannot join to share the work, necessary resources, voice, hope and energy necessary to engage the existing hatred? TIME WILL TELL.
JML, this is either the second or third time that Lennie has ran the situation about Captain Mark Straubel in OIB and George Mintz and Scott X Esidale didn’t say anything. JML, the founders of the NAACP were a group of white liberals before Du Bois’ Niagara Movement in 1905.