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Gresham celebrates Juneteenth

Juneteenth is the oldest known celebration commemorating the end of slavery in the U.S.

GRESHAM, Ore. — An organization called Beyond Black Community Development Corporation worked with the mayor of Gresham to officially proclaim June 19th “Juneteenth Day” in the city.

Gresham Mayor Shane Bemis read the proclamation at a Juneteenth event on Wednesday.

Hundreds of people popped in and out of the celebration Beyond Black put on.

It was a showing of freedom and liberation, of achievement and unity.

“Today means community building, celebration, starting anew,” Beyond Black Board Secretary Latasha Carter said.

It was an event much like the thousands going on across America this Juneteenth - the oldest known celebration commemorating the end of slavery in the U.S.

RELATED: What is Juneteenth?

“Recognizing that, yes, though we are free we still have plenty of work to do and celebrate every milestone we come across,” Carter said.

The organization’s founder Germaine Flentroy says with so many people being pushed further east, they wanted to represent out in Gresham and more accessible to people who live there.

“To let everyone, know the black community is out here, they thriving and we are resilient. And start to build our community again out here,” Flentroy said. “Just as it’s a celebration of slaves [getting] free, we representing our east county being free. As our black community has came out east it’s a celebration saying, yes, we are free.”

They’re building a community and a future shaped by the date June 19th, 1865 when union soldiers told the last enslaved African Americans in Galveston, Texas the Civil War ended, and they were free. Slavery had been abolished.

That day, however, came two and a half years after the Emancipation Proclamation went into effect.

Celebrations followed and sparked traditions lasting the past 154 years.

“A lot of people refer to it as the African American Fourth of July, that this is liberation day for black people in the United States - or one liberation day,” Oregon Historical Society Director of Community Engagement Eliza Canty-Jones said.

Canty-Jones says Juneteenth recognizes the tireless, centuries-long fight to free African Americans.

“When we think about what it means to really have the United States acknowledge at least a piece of injustice of enslavement it is a really big deal,” she added.

Oregon's history is deeply connected to slavery; Canty-Jones says Oregonians chose to be a free state, but ban free African Americans.

“Free black people came here and made homes here and helped build the state - they came anyway - but it was not legal according to the constitution,” she said.

Oregon was founded and referred to as a ‘white utopia’ due to its exclusion of African Americans and exclusion of slavery, Canty-Jones told us. At the time, amidst debate over slavery and rights around the country, there was argument over whether or not to accept Oregon as a state with the restrictions it included in its state constitution.

Many of the people opposed to having slavery in Oregon were not abolitionists, she said because they were supportive of slavery in the American South.

“It’s important for people to realize and recognize the long, deep and complicated and ongoing history of our nation trying to live up to ideals it has on paper. And Juneteenth is one important moment in that,” Canty-Jones added, “But there’s a lot of work people have done and are still doing. So I think recognition of how many steps has taken and is taking for us to achieve equality in the United States – Juneteenth is a really powerful and important reminder of that.”

This Juneteenth, the African American community reflects on that past but chooses to build a new future.

“We can't worry so much about the past, we’re moving to a new future and this is an opportunity as we’re building, we’re building our future,” Flentroy said.

Juneteenth celebrates 1865 freeing of slaves

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