June 17, 2023 – The African American Cultural & Genealogical Society (AACGS) held its 30th annual Juneteenth Banquet on the Richland Campus Friday to celebrate the holiday and honor the history of black freedom in America.
Evelyn Hood, the Executive Director of the AACGS said she hopes that attendees learn more about what they didn’t know before about their history. “I came up through segregation and it’s good to know your history,” Hood said. “Juneteenth is important because Freedom is important for everybody.”
The event, which served as a fundraiser for the AACGS, honored previous AACGS board members and also recognized Dr. Sundiata Keita Cha-Jua, an African-American Studies professor at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, for his research into Samuel J. Bush. The banquet also featured guest speaker John Ashworth, Executive Director of the Lynching Sites Project in Memphis. The Lynching Sites Project of Memphis is part of a larger national effort to locate and memorialize the sites of more than 4,000 documented lynchings from 1877-1950.
Rev. Courtney Carson, Assistant VP of External Relations at Richland Community College and the Director of the Enrich program said the celebration is not just about celebrating the past and the history of black freedom in America, but about rededicating black lives to the future. “It’s important that we as a people know where we come from. Because if we don’t know where we come from, we won’t know who we are” Carson said. “If we don’t know who we are, then we will mistreat where we are, and if we mistreat where we are, then we will cancel out where we need to go”.
Juneteenth is a federal holiday in the United States commemorating the emancipation of enslaved African Americans. Deriving its name from combining June and nineteenth, it is celebrated on the anniversary of the order signed in 1865, proclaiming freedom for slaves in Texas. That occurred two years after President Abraham Lincoln issued the Emancipation Proclamation by executive order.
Check out the photo gallery from the event below.
(Contributors: Ahsaan Spence and Isaiah Bradford)
