Everett Public Libraries to welcome Dr. Zebulon Vance Miletsky for Juneteenth talk

On Wednesday, June 26, in celebration of Juneteenth (June 19), the Everett Public Libraries will welcome a guest speaker to discuss the holiday. Dr. Zebulon Vance Miletsky, an Associate Professor of Africana Studies at Stony Brook University and author of the book “Before Busing: A History of Boston’s Long Black Freedom Struggle,” will discuss the history of Juneteenth and the reasons why it has become a national holiday – and how it has been celebrated in Texas since 1865. In 1980 in Texas, Juneteenth first became a state holiday.

Dr. Miletsky will discuss the arrival of Union troops in Galveston, Texas, under the command of Major General Gordon Grainger on June 19, 1865 – notification that slavery had ended in America – well after the Emancipation Proclamation as well as the passage of the 13th Amendment in January of that year, which was still in the process of being ratified. He will talk about the fact that the enslaved persons still being held in bondage in Texas had to be liberated at bayonet point by General Granger and his troops, who issued an order asserting the Union Army’s authority over the state of Texas based on the authority of the Emancipation Proclamation written a full two and a half years earlier, even though its author, President Lincoln, had already been assassinated and the Civil War had officially ended.

Juneteenth is also the key to understanding “the new Jim Crow” – forcing us to rethink the periodization of the end of slavery – and the fact that there has never been a clear date for the ending of slavery. This suggests something about the ongoing nature of abolition, “de-enslavement” and reconstruction, which continues to this day.

Miletsky will also discuss the history of other, longer celebrations of emancipation in the Northeast and New England, which were celebrating emancipation well before 1863; namely, in Massachusetts and the Greater Boston area. African Americans in Boston had their own emancipation celebrations, including “watch night” traditions, which are still observed in many Black Churches today, including newer local celebrations of the ending of slavery.

The presentation will take place at 7:00 p.m. on Wednesday, June 26, in the Parlin Memorial Library Meeting Room. Please call 617-394-2300 with any questions.