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Date: 6/13/2023
AMHERST — The town’s third annual Juneteenth Jubilee on the common will recognize and celebrate the state and national holiday with a weekend of events and remembrances.
Recognizing the history and the role and importance of the Black community in Amherst, the day distinguishes Amherst’s unique connection to Galveston, Texas, where on June 19, 1865, federal troops announced the freedom of a quarter million enslaved Black people, among the last to learn of the Emancipation Proclamation’s enactment.
Among those troops that day, members of the 54th Regiment of the Massachusetts 5th Cavalry, including Christopher, John, Henry, James and Charles Thompson of Amherst. The five are buried in the West Cemetery.
What has become a collaborative effort involving local nonprofit, Ancestral Bridges, the Amherst Historical Society and Museum and local organizations and families includes the Juneteenth Heritage Walking Tour, which began last year as the first descendant-led and curated walking tour of its kind in the area.
Jennifer Moyston, assistant director of Diversity, Equity and Inclusion for the town has worked with members of the community on commemorative events for several years and said she hopes this year’s weekend of remembrances and happenings will surpass last years.
The jubilee event is planned for Monday, June 19 in town when all non-emergency town offices will be closed in observance of Juneteenth National Independence Day.
“For the jubilee itself, our attendance becomes larger and larger,” Moyston said. “I think the first year I would have said we had about 200 people, last year at some point we definitely had 300 plus people and this year we will see what happens but we’re hoping to beat the records,” she said.
The location this year is also of great importance, Moyston said.
“Having it on the common means a lot because people who are just walking by, lots of time you would see people with Antonio’s boxes because they just went to go get a slice of pizza and then they heard the music so they just walked over to see what was going on,” she said. So it actually pulls people who wouldn’t have necessarily known about the jubilee.”
Moyston explained that putting the pieces together for a large-scale celebration like the jubilee takes a lot of organization and outreach as a significant and specific area of the community becomes involved, including the array of Black-owned food and craft vendors.
The visual attractions and the sounds of the jubilee have a way of drawing people into the historical significance of what the day means, Moyston said.
“It’s nice that we can gather other people who are just in town at the moment,” she added.
In addition to the other cultural and historical presentations offered as part of the weekend, the town is providing its own look at Juneteenth and also delving into its background as a way to add some more education to the day.
“If you’re just in town and you stop, you may not be aware of what Juneteenth really is, I know a lot of people don’t know what it is so we’re doing a little bit of a self-guided tour that is going to involve the history of the Black community in Amherst,” Moyston said. “It will kind of give an understanding of the context, it will talk about the connection that Amherst has with Juneteenth itself and Galveston, Texas.
Moyston said she worked with the curator at the Jones Library to put together the information on the tour.
Those stories have to be told, she said.
“It’s really important because African-American history is U.S. history,” she said.
Moyston also praised the role Ancestral Bridges plays in telling the stories within the Black community while the historical background is also communicated.
Of great importance, Moyston stated is what celebrations and commemorations like the jubilee can offer to the community.
“True to all of the cultural events and heritage events that the DEI Department and the Human Rights Department sponsor is that it brings people together to laugh, dance, eat, [people] that we would most likely never see doing that together,” she said. “That’s like the beauty of it.”
A look ahead and details on the weekend events can be found at ancestral-bridges.org and amherstma.gov.