Filed under: News
From Fort Greene Patch:
Pia Murray did not know what Juneteenth was until she left her Crown Heights home for college in Oberlin, Ohio, a town that had been one of the final stops on the Underground Railroad for escaped slaves. Since 1995, Oberlin has annually celebrated Juneteenth, the day marking the end of slavery in the U.S.
Brenda Brunson-Bey had known about Juneteenth all her life when she moved from Augusta, Georgia to Brooklyn, although she knew it by a different name; her community called it Family Day.
"It was almost a hush-hush thing," says Brunson-Bey, the owner of the Tribal Truths Collection store on South Oxford Street, who believes the African-Americans in her hometown had celebrated with a picnic and holiday festivities every year for generations.
As far as she knows, there were no Juneteenth celebrations anywhere in Brooklyn until 2000, when she herself decided to create one in Fort Greene. Some 150 people attended - a few actually knew what Juneteenth was - and an annual tradition was born.
Last year, the Fort Greene Juneteenth Arts Festival attracted more than a thousand people.
Learn More about this growing celebration at Fort Greene Patch