Ivy Summers remembers Green Bay observing Juneteenth over 20 years ago as less of a celebration for Black people and more of an education campaign for the broader community.
Being one of about 450 Black people living in Green Bay in the 90s, Summers said celebrating Juneteenth offered, for many city residents, an introduction to Black culture, a framing that Summers felt wasn’t necessarily for the Black community.
Community Juneteenth celebrations have been held sporadically in larger communities in northeast Wisconsin since the 1990s, but lagging community leadership in the early 2000s diminished attendance numbers. In 2009, former Wisconsin Gov. Jim Doyle made Juneteenth a legal holiday in the state.
By 2020, the tenor of celebration had changed. George Floyd had recently been murdered by former Minneapolis police officer Derek Chauvin. Over the next year, the pandemic brought to light health disparities in the Black community that had existed far before COVID-19’s reign.
Summers recently came on as the Juneteenth coordinator for We All Rise African American Resource Center, and is coordinating with community members who make up Black Lives United Green Bay for its third annual celebration. Green Bay resumed its community celebrations of Juneteenth in 2020, following the racial unrest in the aftermath of Floyd’s death.
The Black population has also exploded in numbers since the 90s. Black people went from barely pushing the needle on 1% of the population in Green Bay to making up about 6% of city’s population with nearly 6,000 people in 2020.
“We All Rise and Black Lives United saw there was a huge need for the community to come together,” Summers said. “They reignited celebration in Green Bay, and it creates a space for folks to be together authentically in celebrating the culture.”
And indeed, community came together in the wake of Floyd’s murder. Robin Scott, executive director of We All Rise, said Juneteenth 2020 was a success because businesses, organizations and community members saw a need to support and uplift those most impacted by structural racism and anti-Black bias.
“During the uprising, concerned community members and businesses came together to support Black Lives United and We All Rise in leading the charge,” Scott said. “Today, Green Bay has established the same sort of camaraderie that you see in larger cities like Milwaukee and even Appleton.”
Cities across Wisconsin have recognized the need for more Black celebration and joy in Juneteenth, a holiday that fixes into view the long road to freedom for Black people in the United States.
Short for June 19, Juneteenth represents the day in 1865 that federal troops arrived in Galveston, Texas, a full two-and-a-half years after President Abraham Lincoln signed the Emancipation Proclamation, to end the still-continuing practice of slavery by some Texan slave holders who had not told the people they enslaved they were free and that the Civil War had ended.
Six months later, on Dec. 6, 1865, the 13th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution was ratified, permanently abolishing slavery and involuntary servitude.
Sabrina Robins, who has been a board member of the nonprofit African Heritage Inc. in Appleton for 22 years, said the themes for the Appleton Juneteenth festival on June 12 were freedom, unity and community.
Robins said the day can be fun, but is also a solemn reflection on the country’s history of slavery and racism.
“Juneteenth, to me, is a time to commemorate the ending of chattel slavery in the United States and also to honor the sacrifice of those who willingly and unwillingly gave their lives for freedom and the pursuit of liberty,” Robins said. “I will never, ever forget the sacrifices of my ancestors.”
Juneteenth is about overcoming and ‘over finally coming’
Alphonso Simpson cried the day Juneteenth became a federal holiday last year. It was an emotional moment because, for more than 250 years of freedom-themed celebrations of the United States’ birthday each July, it felt like the government was telling people “you have to celebrate Alphonso’s birthday, too.”
Simpson, who heads the African American studies program at University of Wisconsin-Oshkosh, said students sometimes ask him why it’s important to recognize Juneteenth as a holiday.
It marks the day that the news of the Emancipation Proclamation began reaching the enslaved people that still had not been freed in Texas, he tells them. It’s when slavery was finally over.
“That’s what Juneteenth is about: over finally came,” he said. “Overcoming is what all of us desire to do.”
Simpson includes Juneteenth in the curriculum for the Introduction to African American studies course he teaches.
During his summer classes, especially, he talks about it at length since it’s so pertinent and timely.
It comes up in his fall and spring classes, too, but there are other watershed moments just as important and critical to Black history, such as the Harlem Renaissance in the 1920s and August 1619 when the first documented slaves reached American shores.
He also uses the Fourth of July — which he doesn’t celebrate and for him “is just another day” — to talk about Juneteenth.
He’ll go over the Preamble of the Constitution, the Pledge of Allegiance, the Star Spangled Banner, and then pose questions like, “When it says liberty and justice for all, who is included in that ‘all’?”
Simpson moved to Wisconsin in 2019 with the goal of changing the face of African American studies not just at UWO, but across the university system.
African American studies is offered as a minor at UWO, but part of Simpson’s goal is to make it a major field of study. If the past few years are any indication, he foresees that happening in the next couple years. When he started in 2019, only seven students minored in African American studies. There are now 56 students in the African American studies minor program. He estimates about 40% of them are white.
Simpson, who also teaches in the sociology department, said UWO will welcome its first full-time African American studies professor this fall.
Even as someone whose parents were educators, Simpson said, it wasn’t until he was in his PhD program in Wyoming that his eyes were opened to African American studies. Today, he tells his students how fortunate they are to be learning about it at the undergraduate level.
Simpson reminds his students that none of them had anything personally to do with slavery and the creation of systems of oppression in this country, so they don’t need to feel guilty. He can see how the discussions open his students’ minds.
Conversations in his class about Juneteenth usually lead to the question of what it means to be American, Simpson said. Students who identify as a “hyphenated race,” such as African American or Hmong American, for example, will start talking about “the hyphen,” as Simpson described it, or more specifically, all the history that precedes the hyphen.
During those discussions, Simpson said, his white students often find themselves feeling left out because they are “just American,” which is a culture, not an ethnicity. But after those feelings of being left out, he said, students have a lightbulb moment.
“All of us who are hyphenated are defined by our ethnicity, but white people are not,” he said.
The remaining tragedy of Juneteenth not being taught in schools
When she was growing up in Green Bay, the Fourth of July never felt like an event Hannah Beauchamp-Pope could fully celebrate.
Not that she couldn’t get behind the fanfare of the holiday, but something felt askew — and for good reason. The birth of the nation didn’t involve her or her people. It would take nearly 100 years after the birth of the nation in 1776 for the country to abolish the enslavement of Black people.
That became abundantly clear to Beauchamp-Pope when she learned about Juneteenth her freshman year at the University of Wisconsin-Green Bay.
No teachers prior to college had ever taught her about Juneteenth, said Beauchamp-Pope, who is now president of UWGB’s Black Student Union.
“It goes to show the Eurocentrism of our educational systems,” Beauchamp-Pope, 20, said. “Juneteenth is the Independence Day for African Americans, and the reason that’s important is our country is very racially divided, whether you’re looking at geography or the economic wealth gap. Everyone needs to understand this history.”
Juneteenth becoming a federal holiday was a “long, long, long, long” time coming, Simpson said, but the tragedy remains that it’s been left out of the K-12 curriculum – and not just left out. It was never put in, he said.
Schools are required to teach about the Holocaust and the federally recognized American Indian tribes and bands located in Wisconsin, but the state doesn’t require anything directly related to Juneteenth to be taught in public schools.
However, the Wisconsin Department of Public Instruction said it has shared resources with educators about teaching Juneteenth, and there is a state statute that requires students be taught an “appreciation and understanding of different value systems and cultures.”
Summers also didn’t learn the history of Juneteenth when she attended De Pere public schools in the 1990s.
Education, she said, is important, not just in teaching the history behind the holiday, but also in bringing awareness to the high prevalence of anti-Black racism across the globe.
“We know that anti-Blackness is a global thing. The darker your skin, the more at risk you are for physical, emotional and mental violence every single day.”
As more big corporations release Juneteenth-themed products, everything from hats to ice cream flavors, the holiday runs the risk of becoming commercialized, Summers said.
Organizers said they worry that its significance could become lost, reduced to just wearing a pin and eating a brat purchased at a Juneteenth festival.
“The reason that we have celebrations in small cities across the world is that those who are part of the community should be intentional about coming out and feeling the energy to learn and be part of the celebration,” Scott, executive director of We All Rise, said. “You should actively work to uplift, support and celebrate Black people in your community.”
‘It’s a time to celebrate being free’
In light of the struggles brought on by the pandemic, Summers said, Juneteenth at this year’s Green Bay event will offer themes of rest, rejuvenation and reconnection. It will have all the trappings of a block party — replete with barbecue, live bands, food vendors and play.
The festivities will take place from 11 a.m. to 7 p.m. Saturday, June 18, at Joannes Park, 215 S. Baird St., Green Bay.
Additionally, Black-owned businesses, organizations and nonprofits will showcase the work they’re doing in the community.
Appleton’s 12th annual Juneteenth celebration was June 12 at Jones Park.
Of the festivities she most looked forward to, Robins from Appleton singled out “The Black Excellence Graduation,” a ceremony that honored high school graduates, college graduates, and graduates from African Heritage’s entrepreneurial certificate programs.
“(Juneteenth is) a time to celebrate being free, being African American, being American and participating in moving our country forward in all areas needed to sustain a good life,” Robins said. “It’s about not only being a good American citizen, but acknowledging you’re a global citizen as well.”
Reach AnnMarie Hilton at ahilton@gannett.com or 920-370-8045. Follow her on Twitter at @hilton_annmarie.
Contact Natalie Eilbert at neilbert@gannett.com or view her Twitter profile at @natalie_eilbert.
