Minneapolis marks Juneteenth after official holiday recognition Race Themes

Minneapolis, United States – On a sunny summer morning in George Floyd Square, a gardener lights a holy suit on a small wooden plate next to Floyd’s now evil black-and-white mural.

In an adjoining church parking lot, an inflatable Sponge Bob-themed bounce house has been built. Inside, kids are bouncing around and throwing inflatable beach balls on a black barrel grill near hot dogs, burgers and whispers.

“This year is something special for Juneteenth. We are focusing on the future and the future is children, ”James Johnson of the Worldwide Outreach for Christ Church told Al Jazeera. “Now that it’s a national holiday, it’s something special and we want to express that.”

On June 19, or Juneteenth, Union soldiers remembered the day they arrived in Galveston, Texas and told African Americans they were slaves – more than two years after the end of the Civil War and President Abraham Lincoln declared everything he signed the Emancipation Proclamation. slaves free.

The celebrations began the following year to commemorate the event and this date has been celebrated on the occasion of the second Independence Day in African American communities. In recent decades the movement to make Juneteenth an official holiday has grown.

In Minneapolis, the city’s human resources department recommended in April the 12th paid vacation in the city of Juneteenth. May 14, Minneapolis City Council he made an officer, then the country in general, when It was signed by President Biden The Juneteenth National Independence Day law came into force on June 17th.

While the “twin” cities of Minneapolis and St. Paul were holding celebrations on Saturday, some of the events have nothing to do with recent moves by local and federal governments.

“It doesn’t change anything,” Kevin Reese, Until We Are All Free, founder of a Minneapolis-based human rights organization, told Al Jazeera.

She was preparing to host a community event in the afternoon at a Southern Minneapolis cafe, along with opportunities for local performers and artists to pray and have community conversations.

“It’s another gesture from America to the descendants of slaves. It really doesn’t do anything and America can’t do anything for lack of reparations … that would satisfy me. “

Earlier this year, Until We Are All Free collaborated with other community groups at the previous Juneteenths, but this year they are holding their block party event due to the group’s continued growth. “It’s going to be our first annual event,” Reese says. “We’re preparing 500 people.”

A few weeks after Minneapolis named Juneteenth a holiday, Mayor Jacob Frey began pushing George Floyd Square, which has been hampered by the community since Floyden’s assassination, to reopen to traffic.

George Floyd Square was recently reopened to traffic [Cinnamon Janzer/Al Jazeera]

City members have accused the mayor misuse of emergency powers during the pandemic he had to make a $ 359,000 contract to reopen the intersection with a community group.

Tony Smith, who was passing a slice of shadow in the warm morning square, believes that reopening is important for businesses that have closed and struggled, but that memories need to be left in place and kept in place.

He spent time in Juneteenth collecting donations for those in the city’s homeless camps, through Catholic Charities, a local non-profit organization.

“I usually have a barbecue [spending Juneteenth in] loneliness, ”he told Al Jazeera. ‘There’s nothing to be happy about, Juneteenth. You know he’s very angry … when I heard that [Biden] it became a national holiday, which removed the anger. “

Tony Smith sits in George Floyd Square, Minneapolis, in preparation for Juneteenth celebrations [Cinnamon Janzer/Al Jazeera]

In northern Minneapolis, an extensive celebration of a large parking lot that encloses booths and tents set up by community groups and yet other bouncing houses was rapidly taking shape among more and more people.

As he prepares a TV tent surrounded by black, red, and green balloons talking to volunteers on the promenade, about the “All Our Feast – Juneteenth” festival, Black Bold and Brilliant founder and director and one of the organizers, Wisdom Mawusi, head to head he is arranging a space called a black man’s cave.

“We wanted to do and acknowledge something, we wanted to celebrate black men,” he told Al Jazeera. “We’re creating a nice space for black men to honor and respect everything they and they do and how important they are in our community. Sometimes they don’t get enough of that positive recognition.”

Across the park, while funk music plays in the background, Comer X. Henry, director of recovery services similar to the Twin Cities Recovery Project – an organization that provides support and services to people with substance use disorders – is one of four men working. to raise another tent.

He told Al Jazeera that Juneteenth is a celebration called “slave freedom. It means a lot to me in two ways: one is that we are physically free. The other is my truth, that we are still mentally closed and still dependent on ourselves.”

In naming Juneteenth a municipal and national holiday, Henry says “it’s definitely a big step and I think we’re moving in the right direction but for me it’s a little deeper and harder. [We’re] facing white supremacy and still suffering. “