The celebration of Juneteenth reminds us of the continuing struggle for freedom. We don’t see the holiday as a declaration of victory but more of a chance to celebrate the progress we have made and to acknowledge there remains much work to do. The holiday also recognizes the countless people, many of whose names we do not know, who fought for freedom. One of those in this fight, whose life has not been long celebrated, is Opal Lee. Growing up in Texas Ms. Lee and her family would celebrate Juneteenth. On one Juneteenth in 1939, when she Ms. Lee was 12, a white mob torched her family home. In 2016 she began a walking campaign from Fort Worth to Washington to make Juneteenth a federal holiday eventually succeeding in 2021 when President Biden signed legislation marking June 19th as a federal holiday. This year President Biden presented Ms. Lee, now 97, with the Presidential Medal of Freedom for all her efforts to make Juneteenth a holiday.
We also recognize today our work at WJCS to ensure, support, and uplift marginalized communities throughout Westchester County. We all have a responsibility to fight for equity and our work is an important part of fulfilling that commitment. At WJC,S we particularly thank our Undoing Racism Alliance and all its subcommittees for long leading our fight for justice and thank all of you who are working through committees or affinity groups to ensure we are a more inclusive agency where everyone feels they belong.
The country recently celebrated the 70th anniversary of Brown v Board of Education the landmark lawsuit that began the process of end legalized school desegregation. On that occasion Janai Nelson, the President and Director-Counsel of the NAACP Legal Defense Fund, said, “if we think about those who actually sacrificed — people who were not part of an institutional army but were a self-appointed army of transformers, everyday citizens who decided to take one of the biggest risks any person could take in that moment, and that was to be a Black person defying a system that was designed for their own subjugation,” she said. “And they did it. They did it with daring, they did it with courage. And we don’t sing their praises as loudly as we should.” Let’s also make Juneteenth about singing the praises a little louder for those who went forward with courage and daring to make our world a just and more equitable one.
