juneteenth

Juneteenth: The Spirit of Freedom, The Heart of Community

Sherri V. Cummings, Bristol Middle Passage Port Marker Project

When we think of Juneteenth, we often imagine it as a Southern holiday rooted in Texas. This is because on June 19, 1865, more than two years after Abraham Lincoln issued the Emancipation Proclamation granting freedom to those enslaved in the southern states, Major General Gordon Granger arrived in Galveston, Texas and issued General Order No. 3. This order further enforced emancipation for the more than 250,000 enslaved people still held in bondage in Confederate territory.

Yet the spirit of Juneteenth transcends state lines. In Coahulia, Mexico it is celebrated by descendants of Black Seminoles who liberated themselves in 1852 and forged free communities across the border. In the North, Black communities commemorated emancipation on different dates—August 1st, marking British Caribbean abolition in 1834; January 1st, recognizing both Lincoln’s Proclamation and Haitian Independence, and later Juneteenth, found its place in the North. For generations, Northern Black communities have marked freedom on many days—not because they didn’t value Juneteenth, but because freedom never came all at once. It came in fragments. It came through struggle. And it was always sustained by community.

Here at the BMPPMP, we celebrate Juneteenth because it calls us to do what African American and Native American communities have always done in the face of historical erasure: remember together, mourn together and envision freedom together. Juneteenth is not only a celebration of emancipation, it is a reminder that the path to freedom is long, and that we are all responsible for honoring the lives and labor of those who endured the Middle Passage, slavery and its many afterlives.

Bristol’s history as a major port in the transatlantic slave trade, a place where ships departed, where African children were trafficked, and where wealth was built on bondage, makes the act of public remembrance urgent and necessary. By commemorating Juneteenth here, in this

Northern town that profited from human trafficking, we confront the illusion that slavery was only a Southern sin. We restore dignity to the memory of the enslaved and affirm that their descendants are still here, still rising, and still shaping history.

The Port Marker Project is more than a monument, it is a community-built vessel for truth-telling. In that spirit, Juneteenth becomes a living ritual: a time to gather on ancestral ground, to reflect, and reaffirm that the work of emancipation continues. When we mark Juneteenth in Bristol, we are not just looking back—we are claiming the right to belong, to be seen, and to define what freedom means today.

So, as we mark Juneteenth this year, may we reflect on the unfinished work of freedom, the work of remembrance, and historical justice. May we remember those who endured bondage at the edge of this very shore. And may we recommit ourselves to building a future rooted in truth-telling, healing, and enduring, active community.