Saturday, June 22nd, 2019 Juneteenth Celebration includes:
Community Dialogue, Soul Food, Dramatic Readings, African Drumming & Dance, Gospel Music Concert
Celebrating New England’s 18th Century “Negro Courts”
Saturday, June 22, 2019
11:00 am-4pm & 7pm–8:30pm
Middle Street Baptist Church
18 Court Street, Portsmouth, NH 03801
Suggested Donation: $20
The bleakness and brutality of slave life was alleviated, in small measure, by the celebration of holidays. Most enslaved Africans in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries looked forward to several holidays during the year – Christmas, New Year’s, Easter. In the North enslaved and freed Africans also celebrated Black Election Day.
Election Day meant more than a rare break from toil and a chance to have fun. It was a day the enslaved could express pride in their African heritage and participate in a form of self-governance as they chose their representative to rule over the black social order.
This year’s Juneteenth Celebration will honor the Africans of the “Negro Courts” who served as governors, leaders, spokesmen, negotiators, arbiters and magistrate as well as the people who found ways to establish a culture steeped in African tradition in spite of the shackles of enslavement.
Juneteenth is the oldest known nationally celebrated event commemorating the ending of slavery in the United States. Although President Lincoln’s Emancipation Proclamation declared that as of January 1, 1863, all slaves in states in rebellion against the Union “shall be then, thenceforward, and forever be free,” it was not until June 19th, 1865, two years later, that the enslaved people in Galveston, Texas, got the news that the war had ended and they were free.
Schedule of Events
11:00 am Community Dialogue
In a Matter of Justice: 18th Century “Negro Courts” and Judicial Ideals of Today
Speakers: Ray Rickman, Lauren Greenwald, Diane Lucas and Jordan Thompson
12:30 pm Soul Food Lunch
1:45 pm Music & March to the African Burying Ground Memorial
A Joyous Celebration featuring African Drumming by Tam Tam Gisé with Robert Bellinger & Djems Domerson, and a Musical Procession to the African Burying Ground Memorial by the Leftist Marching Band
2:00 Commemorative Event
In Honor of the Ancestors: African Drumming, A Dramatic Reading of the 1779 Petition, and Gospel Song. Music by the Seacoast West African Drum and Dance Group directed by Keira & Elizabeth Fowler and North Star AMEZion Right Now Choir & Jazz Gospel Band featuring Rev. Jeffery McIlwain, Marie Foti, and Aurora Jones.
7:00 pm Gospel Music Concert
Make a Joyous Noise: Music by North Star AME Zion Right Now Choir & Jazz Gospel Band featuring Rev. Jeffery McIlwain, Marie Foti, and Aurora Jones; Rev. Lillian Buckley & TJ Wheeler; Rev. Robert Thompson; Paster Ruth Choate & Choir; Pastor Olga Tines & Friends.
Presenters Biographies
Ray Rickman is a businessman and president of the Rickman Group, a consulting firm that raises money and conducts management and diversity training for non-profits and small and large businesses. An avid historian, Rickman is also the executive director of Stages of Freedom, a nonprofit that provides African American culture programs and free swimming lessons to hundreds of Youth of Color. He is a former State Representative from Providence and has served as Rhode Island Deputy Secretary of State.
Lauren Greenwald is a staff attorney at New Hampshire Legal Assistance, specializing in housing law, including discrimination under the Fair Housing Act. Prior to this position, Lauren worked for over 15 years as a criminal defense attorney with the New Hampshire Public Defender, and as a private defense attorney at Samdperil and Welsh, PLLC, in Exeter, NH. Attorney Greenwald began her legal career as a judicial clerk in the United States District Court MA, and also, worked for the United Nations in the Office of the Prosecutor at the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia – the tribunal tasked with adjudicating war crimes, genocide, and crimes against humanity that came from the conflict in the Balkans in the 1990s.
Diane Lucas is senior legal counsel for the Justice Collaborative. She previously served as an assistant attorney general in the Civil Rights Bureau of the New York State Attorney General’s Office. Diane handled matters in criminal justice reform, equal access to education, immigration, consumer racial profiling, voting rights, and housing and employment discrimination. Before joining the attorney general’s office, Diane was a public defender at the Legal Aid Society in New York City. Diane clerked for the Honorable Bernice Donald in the Western District of Tennessee. Diane received a BA from New York University and JD from Harvard Law School.
Jordan Thompson is a writer, youth activist and community organizer from Nashua. In 2017, he ran a youth-powered campaign for moderator in Nashua’s Ward 2. He ran for the New Hampshire House of Representatives in 2018, narrowly losing the primary by 30 votes. Today, he’s focused his efforts on child welfare advocacy and empowering others through cultural awareness and civic engagement. In February 2018 he was one of 10 young men of color selected to participate in the My Brother’s Keeper Conference for young leaders, a White House initiative started by President Barack Obama.
Robert Bellinger
Event Sponsors
