Syracuse’s Juneteenth Festival returned to downtown today after a two-year hiatus due to the pandemic. The celebration began Friday with a flag-raising ceremony. The streets surrounding City Hall were filled with soul food vendors, merchants, and performers.
The festivities commemorate the day slaves were freed in Texas, the last state to abolish slavery. Though June 19th just recently became a national holiday, it’s long been celebrated in Syracuse. The City of Syracuse has held a festival for the holiday since 1988, only missing the last two years due to COVID-19. Syracuse Professor Dr. Roosevelt Wright says the site of the festival was an important location in freeing slaves.
“We are standing in probably the most historic land in America when it comes to the underground railroad. Ladies and Gentlemen, Washington Street was the main line of the New York central railroad. Can you imagine the people who came to Syracuse in front of City Hall," Wright said.
Juneteenth's history and legacy is also being carried on by Syracuse’s next generation. Edward Smith K-8 School student and Juneteenth essay contest winner Jai’neya Wright hopes the community can use what it learned from the past and take it into the future.
“I hope for all people to be able to celebrate Juneteenth. Poor, rich, white, black – everybody. I hope for people of all ages to be educated about Juneteenth’s origins, about racism, and about what African-Americans had to go through in the past. In the future I hope to see schools teaching children everything there is to know about racism and past slave days. If that happened there’d be less controversary when those kids grew up. There is hope that one day people won’t see skin color they’ll just see another person,” Wright said.
Syracuse’s Juneteenth celebrations will continue with a parade at 11:00 a.m. Saturday .