Applause echoed throughout the Gainesville City Hall Plaza Tuesday morning as city and county officials, first responders and community members watched the raising of the Juneteenth flag to kick off the 5th annual Journey to Juneteenth celebration.
Gainesville’s month-long commemoration of emancipated enslaved African Americans started with the celebration of Florida Emancipation Day when over 61,000 enslaved Floridians were freed on May 20, 1865, nearly two years after former president Abraham Lincoln’s Emancipation Proclamation.
The festivities end on June 19 with the nationally recognized Juneteenth holiday marking the date when Union soldiers in Texas announced in 1865 that the war had ended and all enslaved peoples were declared free.
During Tuesday’s opening ceremony, Gainesville Mayor Harvey Ward proclaimed June 19 as Journey to Juneteenth Day in the city before students from Caring and Sharing Learning School raised the Juneteenth flag.
“There are folks who don’t want us to tell these stories, who are uncomfortable with the city of Gainesville or anybody else telling each story,” Ward said. “Well, I’m sorry that they’re uncomfortable because other people were uncomfortable for a very long time, and their stories deserve to be told, and we’re going to be telling them.”
The kick-off also featured a performance of “Lift Every Voice and Sing” by the Saint Barbara Leadership Institute choir, a song which Cotton Club Museum and Cultural Center founder and CEO Vivian Filer said was written as the black national anthem.
Filer said African Americans have gotten where they are today by faith, and that the messages of hope, equality and freedom found in the song are still relevant in a world where people continue with the struggle to divide over race and forget the past.
“When you look at what the world is doing about trying to erase our history, you can’t do that unless you’re all going back from which you came, because we’re all on this ground because we came from somewhere else,” Filer said.
Here is a list of the upcoming “Journey to Juneteenth” events happening in Gainesville:
Date: Saturday, May 24
Time: 9 a.m. to 5 p.m.
Location: Cotton Club Museum and Cultural Center (837 SE 7th Ave.)
Date: Saturday, May 31
Time: Noon to 4 p.m.
Location: Harn Museum of Art (3259 Hull Rd.)
Date: Saturday, June 7
Time: 6 to 10 p.m.
Location: The Hippodrome Cinema (25 SE 2nd Pl.)
Date: Wednesday, June 18
Time: Noon to 8 p.m.
Location: Santa Fe College Blount Hall (530 W University Ave.)
Date: Thursday, June 19
Time: 7:30 to 9 a.m.
Location: Cotton Club Museum and Cultural Center (837 SE 7th Ave.)
Date: Thursday, June 19
Time: 6 to 9 p.m.
Location: Bo Diddley Plaza (111 E University Ave.)
Date: Friday, June 20
Time: 10:30 to 11 a.m.
Location: Depot Park play area (874 SE 4th St.)
Date: Saturday, June 21
Time: 3 to 9 p.m.
Location: Bo Diddley Plaza (111 E University Ave.)
Date: Sunday, June 22
Time: Noon to 6 p.m.
Location: TBD
