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Happy Juneteenth!!!!!!!!

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Tiredretiredlawyer
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Happy Juneteenth!!!!!!!!

#1

Post by Tiredretiredlawyer »

https://www.sistersletter.com/culture/m ... juneteenth
Meet the Grandmother of Juneteenth
Retired teacher Opal Lee, 95, shares how she sparked the movement that turned a cherished tradition into our newest national holiday. Plus: free online event!


Have you ever had a gut feeling about something? I felt, positively, like I hadn’t done enough with my life. I’d finished college, gotten a master’s degree, taught school, worked as a social worker, had children. We had a farm. Our food bank served 500 families a day. I was volunteering for Habitat for Humanity. But even into my 80s, I had a nagging feeling that I should be doing more.

And I had always thought that Juneteenth was a day everybody ought to know about: the day in 1865 when the last of the people held in bondage in Texas learned they were free. So, in 2016, I began a march from Fort Worth to Washington, D.C., to draw attention to Juneteenth. I didn’t walk the whole way, but I did make it to Washington. In 2019, I started a petition, and we garnered 1.5 million signatures in favor of the holiday. People talked about it. And, of course, the death of George Floyd and the demonstrations for social justice that followed have helped draw attention to the cause. The fact that Juneteenth became a national holiday in my lifetime—I’m still on cloud nine. I could do a holy dance except they’d say I was twerking!

Older people don’t always remember this, but we have power. We have so much to teach the younger generations. I know some people are afraid. They don’t want to be bothered, or they draw into themselves. But the future depends on us.
"Mickey Mouse and I grew up together." - Ruthie Tompson, Disney animation checker and scene planner and one of the first women to become a member of the International Photographers Union in 1952.
jcolvin2
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Re: Happy Juneteenth!!!!!!!!

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Post by jcolvin2 »

I grew up in Texas. My father worked as a psychiatrist for the state mental hospital system. In the 1970s, my father and his fellow state employees had a choice of holidays: Juneteenth or Robert E. Lee’s birthday. My father was not surprised that virtually all of the black employees elected to take Juneteenth, while the white employees selected Lee’s birthday.

As a kid in middle school, the choice seemed kinda weird to me at the time. In retrospect, it seems monstrous: “Yes, the North won and ended slavery, but our sympathies - and those of your white co-workers - lie with the South.”
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AndyinPA
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Re: Happy Juneteenth!!!!!!!!

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Post by AndyinPA »

Good holiday to add to the mix. And nice timing, too, after Memorial Day and two weeks before Independence Day, I think. Nice coincidence.
"Choose your leaders with wisdom and forethought. To be led by a coward is to be controlled by all that the coward fears… To be led by a liar is to ask to be told lies." -Octavia E. Butler
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Re: Happy Juneteenth!!!!!!!!

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Post by raison de arizona »

Just wait until somebody tells this guy about St. Patrick's Day.
Ron Filipkowski 🇺🇦 @RonFilipkowski wrote: While showing photos of black people drinking, Newsmax host Greg Kelly says the Juneteenth holiday is just an excuse for people in “urban areas” to drink, get high, smoke weed, and riot.
“Remember, democracy never lasts long. It soon wastes, exhausts, and murders itself. There never was a democracy yet that did not commit suicide.” —John Adams
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Re: Happy Juneteenth!!!!!!!!

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Post by Whatever4 »

Harry E Reed Insurance Agency in Millinocket Maine on Monday. (Millinocket, population 4,114, 97.7% white)
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