USU schedules Juneteenth celebration for June 17-19

LOGAN – For the second year a Juneteenth celebration is scheduled for the Utah State University campus, June 17-19.

Cree Taylor, Juneteenth planning committee chair, says the day commemorates the 13th amendment which abolished slavery, Jan. 1, 1865.

“What had happened, enslaved people in Galveston, Texas didn’t get the news that they had been emancipated, that they were freed,” Taylor explains. “So, about a year after the emancipation proclamation was signed, these enslaved folks were informed that, ‘Hey, you’re free. You don’t need to keep working the fields anymore. You can go off and try and live your best life.’

“And that happened to be in Galveston, Texas, on June 19, 1866.”

Since USU’s first observance last June, Juneteenth has become a national holiday.

“And what was really cool, is that our committee members last year were able to interview Miss Opal Lee who is known as the ‘Mother of Juneteenth’ and she had been fighting for decades to get Juneteenth made a national holiday,” says Taylor. “And not long after we recorded an interview with her, which can be found on our Juneteenth website, she was at the White House with President Biden when he signed it into law, Juneteenth as a national celebratory holiday.”

During this year’s Utah legislative session, Gov. Spencer Cox made it a Utah holiday.

A complete list of events is available at juneteenth.usu.edu.

Free News Delivery by Email

Would you like to have the day's news stories delivered right to your inbox every evening? Enter your email below to start!

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

For security, use of Google's reCAPTCHA service is required which is subject to the Google Privacy Policy and Terms of Use.

I agree to these terms.

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.