GREENFIELD — Some 30 community members gathered on Beacon Field in 90-degree weather Wednesday afternoon for the city’s third annual Juneteenth celebration. In 2021, the Biden administration officially recognized Juneteenth — commemorating the day in 1865 when the last enslaved people in Texas were emancipated — as a federal holiday. While the day celebrates the end of American slavery, most of the speakers present focused on the work still needed for the country to progress toward racial equality.
“The freedom of slavery in the 1700s or 1800s was kind of a transactional announcement, but today Black people still feel like slaves. We don’t see the bonds, we don’t see the restrictions, we don’t necessarily have to see the barriers, but they are there,” said Franklin County CDC Racial Justice Community Engagement Leader Traci Talbert. ” I am here to help you disrupt the very thing that keeps racism alive in it’s not-so-noticeable format.
” From noon to 5 p.m., the field came alive with performances from a variety of acts, such as Senegalese dancer Abdou Sarr, the Franklin County’s YMCA Dancers, Strings for Kids, Musica Franklin, Style FX studios and the Springfield-based musician NBS Malay, who led a call-and-response, prompting the crowd to yell “I am royalty,” before a brief freestyle poetry performance and song.
“I am royalty when I was wrong. No retaliation, I followed up. I am royalty because when times went down, I kept my head high.
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