ATLANTA: Thousands marched through US cities on Friday in Juneteenth observances marking the abolition of slavery more than a century and a half ago, an occasion freighted with special resonance this year amid America's reckoning with its legacy of racism.
Texas officially made it a holiday in 1980, and 45 more states and the District of Columbia have since followed suit.Four Democratic US senators planned to introduce a Bill to declare Juneteenth a federal holiday. Many Atlanta marchers carried signs proclaiming"Black Lives Matter", or"Get your knee off our necks", and"I can't breathe", referring to Floyd's dying words.Marcher Antonio Jeremiah Parks, 27, of Atlanta said the civil rights movement had not yet fulfilled its promises.
In New York City, a few hundred protesters, most of them wearing masks against the spread of the coronavirus, gathered outside the Brooklyn Museum. Protesters carry an empty symbolic casket draped with an American flag during a Juneteenth march in Tulsa, Oklahoma AFP/WIN MCNAMEEIn Texas, where Juneteenth originated, Lucy Bremond oversees what is believed to be the oldest public celebration of the occasion each year in Houston's Emancipation Park. This year a gathering that typically draws around 6,000 people to the park was replaced with a virtual observance.