With street parties, the trumpets and drums of marching bands, speeches and a few political rallies, people across the United States marked Juneteenth this weekend, a jubilee commemorating the end of the legal enslavement of black Americans.
"This is America's holiday, not just African Americans' holiday," said Gerald Griggs, the Georgia state president of the NAACP civil rights organisation.Juneteenth, or June 19th, marks the day in 1865 when a Union general informed a group of enslaved people in Texas that they were free. President Abraham Lincoln's Emancipation Proclamation became effective in 1863, during the Civil War, but could not be implemented until Union troops wrested areas from Confederate control.
In a proclamation on Friday, Mr Biden remarked on the ten people killed in a mass shooting in Buffalo, New York, on 14 May. Mr Griggs said Juneteenth - commemorated by black people for generations - is a somber moment to reflect on the need for reforms on voting rights, prisons and law enforcement seen by many black Americans as discriminatory.Atlanta began with a festival in the heart of the city on Friday and a parade beginning at the historic Ebenezer Baptist Church where Civil Rights leader Martin Luther King Jr preached.
They are still stuck on the Democrat plantation.
Divisive nonsense. African Americans want to be African but live in America, while never wishing to return to Africa, even on holidays.
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