The Dane County Board recognized June 19th as a day to celebrate and honor the influence and the history of the African American community as Dane County officials raised the Juneteenth flag at their first-ever ceremony on June 17.
Dane County Supervisor Shelia Stubbs (District 23) coordinated the Juneteenth Flag Ceremony at the City-County Building.
“Juneteenth offers an opportunity to begin to heal our local community,” said Stubbs, who also serves in the Wisconsin Assembly. “I’m honored that the Dane County Board has recognized June
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Anthony Gray, Dane County Board Supervisor for District 14, gave the welcome at the event. Speakers included Dane County Executive Joe Parisi; Dane County Board Chair Analiese Eicher; Mt. Zion Pastor Dr. Marcus Allen; Madison Common Council President Sheri Carter; Annie Weatherby Flowers, co-founder of Madison’s Juneteenth Celebration; psalmist Dr. Roderquita Moore; Dr. Ruben Anthony, president and CEO of Urban League of Greater Madison, and Dane County Supervisor Teran Peterson.
Juneteenth commemorates June 19, 1865, a day when African-American slaves in Texas were told by Union forces that they were free. They were the final group of slaves to realize their freedom. Deep in the Confederacy, they were unaware of the signing of the Emancipation Proclamation almost two years earlier. A celebration of the day has been held annually in Texas ever since, which eventually spread to other states.
For the first time ever in Madison, a Juneteenth flag will fly over both the Madison City-County Building and the Wisconsin State Capitol building, which will be raised on Friday.
“Some people say that the civil rights movement is over, but I say it never stopped,” Carter told the crowd, “because we have to continue to fight.
“But this time is different. The civil rights movement before was about us, but we also included everybody else because we wanted human rights,” she added. “This fight is about us. This fight is for our survival. This fight is for us to live, thrive and achieve.”
The Dane County Board of Supervisors passed a resolution earlier this month recognizing the importance of Juneteenth in Dane County which acknowledged that “even in 2020 in the United States of America, the legacy of slavery is felt daily by African Americans, and the promise of liberation has yet to be fulfilled, as evidenced by a lack of equal access to educational and economic opportunity, in challenged health outcomes, and, most critically, in disproportionate and sometimes life-threatening interaction with law enforcement and the criminal justice system.”
You can read the entire resolution here.
Juneteenth has been celebrated in Wisconsin since 1971 in Milwaukee and since 1990 in Madison. It was declared a Wisconsin State Holiday on December 1, 2009.
