San Luis Obispo Black Lives Matter group celebrates Juneteenth at downtown park
San Luis Obispo community members gathered Saturday afternoon for a Juneteenth celebration at Mitchell Park hosted by Black Lives Matter Community Action.
Juneteenth commemorates the ending of slavery in the United States on June 19, 1865, the day a Union general informed enslaved Black people of their freedom in Galveston, Texas.
This announcement happened two months after the Confederate army surrendered on April 9, 1865, and more than two and a half years after the Emancipation Proclamation was issued by President Abraham Lincoln.
More than 100 people attended the downtown San Luis Obispo celebration, filled with music performances, games, art vendors and food catered by Papa Jay’s Southern Que Zine.
R.A.C.E. Matters Executive Director Courtney Haile said the event was “a joyful celebration of Black freedom.”
Cal Poly alumni and Silas Art owner Kristin Lee sold acrylic-pour painting and resin creations at the celebration.
While Lee lives in South Los Angeles, the Cal Poly alumnae said she wanted to return to San Luis Obispo for Juneteenth.
“When I first started at Cal Poly there was a really small Black population,” Lee said.
Lee graduated from Cal Poly three years ago with degrees in psychology and comparative ethnic studies. Since then, Lee said the Black community has grown in San Luis Obispo.
“It makes me so ecstatic to see that they were able to have a Juneteenth celebration,” Lee said. “I want to be a part of the good things that come out of this city.”
President Joe Biden signed the Juneteenth National Independence Day Act on Thursday, establishing Juneteenth as a federal holiday. Federal workers were given Friday off. Future federal observances will fall on June 19 — unless it’s a weekend day — and a number of companies and organizations plan to make it a paid day off starting next year.
Juneteenth is the 12th federal holiday, and the first new holiday since Martin Luther King Jr. Day was introduced in 1983.
“Juneteenth marks both the long, hard night of slavery and subjugation and a promise we’re bright and morning to come,” Biden said. “By making Juneteenth a federal holiday, all Americans can feel the power of this day and learn from our history and celebrate progress and grapple with the distance we’ve come, but the distance we have to travel to.”
Biden said he was pleased with “an overwhelming” bipartisan support of the legislation from Congress.
Haile said the establishment of Juneteenth as a federal holiday is “a nice gesture,” but that many people continue to look for systemic changes around voting, reparations and police violence in the United States.
Lee said that Biden’s decision to commemorate Juneteenth as a federal holiday could change the celebration’s meaning.
“I could do without it being a holiday because it just takes away from the meaning,” Lee said.
This story was originally published June 19, 2021 at 3:39 PM.
