Atlanta, US
Reuters
Thousands marched in US cities, major companies gave employees the day off and people in coronavirus lockdown held online forums on Friday as America marked Juneteenth, a holiday commemorating the end of Black slavery that carries special resonance this year.
After a wave of recent protests and national soul-searching about the country’s legacy of racial injustice, marchers took to the streets from Atlanta to Oakland to mark the day and protest police brutality.
Demonstrators march as they take part in events to mark Juneteenth, which commemorates the end of slavery in Texas, two years after the 1863 Emancipation Proclamation freed slaves elsewhere in the United States, amid nationwide protests against racial inequality, in the Harlem neighbourhood of Manhattan, in New York City, New York, US, on 19th June. PICTURE: Reuters/Andrew Kelly
With many formal Juneteenth events canceled due to coronavirus concerns, activists instead organised street marches and “car caravans” to give people a way to show solidarity.
The annual Juneteenth celebration of the emancipation of slaves a century and a half ago comes this year on the heels of mass protests triggered by the killing of George Floyd, a black man who died after a white Minneapolis police officer pinned him to the ground with a knee to his neck for nearly nine minutes.
UN SETS UP INQUIRY INTO RACISM
The UN Human Rights Council on Friday condemned discriminatory and violent policing after the death of George Floyd in Minneapolis last month and ordered a report on “systemic racism” against people of African descent.
The 47-member-state forum unanimously adopted a resolution brought by African countries. The mandate also asks UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Michelle Bachelet to examine government responses to peaceful protests, including alleged use of excessive force, and deliver findings in a year’s time.
Philonise Floyd, the brother of the Black man whose death under the knee of a white officer roused world protests against racial injustice, urged the forum on Wednesday to investigate US police brutality and racial discrimination.
Burkina Faso’s Ambassador Dieudonné W Désiré Sougouri presented the African resolution on Friday, urging its adoption by consensus.
“It is important to show Africa…the Human Rights Council has heard the plight of African and people of African descent calling for equal treatment and application of equal rights for all,” he said.
The Africa group had made numerous “concessions” in the negotiations with other countries, he added.
Senegal’s envoy Coly Seck, a former council president, welcomed the consensus, telling the talks: “Black Lives Matter”.
The text was watered down during closed-door negotiations from an initial draft explicitly calling for a UN commission of inquiry on racism in the United States and elsewhere.
“It is absurd that the final resolution passed by the United Nations strips mention of the United States, where police kill people, particularly Black people, at alarmingly higher rates compared to other developed countries,” said Jamil Dakwar of the American Civil Liberties Union, which led 600 activist groups in calling for the urgent debate.
“The United Nations needs to do its job – not get bullied out of doing it – and hold the United States accountable,” he said in a statement.
The Trump administration, which quit the forum two years ago alleging bias against its ally Israel, made no immediate comment. US Ambassador to the UN in Geneva Andrew Bremberg said on Wednesday that his country was “not above scrutiny” as it grappled with racial discrimination but was implementing police reforms after Floyd’s killing.
During the debate, Western delegations including Australia, Germany, Italy, Poland and the European Union said that the United States should not be singled out.
“This problem does not belong to any one country, it is a problem around the world,” said Australian ambassador Sally Mansfield.
Activists said that Australia had been particularly active in negotiations to take the spotlight off the United States.
Germany’s ambassador Michael Ungern-Sternberg said: “We are convinced a report with a broader approach and less focus on one specific case would have been more appropriate”.
– STEPHANIE NEBEHAY, Reuters
Four Democratic US senators are to introduce a bill to declare Juneteenth as a federal holiday.
“Juneteenth is the oldest celebration of the end of slavery in the US. And it should be recognized as a federal holiday,” Tina Smith, one of the senators, wrote on Twitter.
Weeks of mounting demands to end police brutality and racial injustice animated rallies expected in cities coast to coast, including Washington, Philadelphia, Chicago and Los Angeles.
In Atlanta, an important center of the civil rights movement of the 1960s, about 1,000 people gathered at Centennial Olympic Park downtown for a peaceful march on the state capitol building.
Emotions were running high in Atlanta after Rayshard Brooks, an African American, was fatally shot in the back by a white policeman in the parking lot of a fast-food restaurant in the city. The policeman was terminated by the department and charged with murder.
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 death.
Marcher Antonio Jeremiah Parks, 27, of Atlanta said the civil rights movement had not yet fulfilled its promises.
“Civil rights isn’t over,” said Parks, who is black and works at a homeless shelter. “We still feel the pain of slavery. It’s not healed, and won’t be until we’re treated the same.”
Leia Shanks, 34, who is white and works in retail, said:
“We’re here in solidarity,” she said. “We need to stand against racism and even though it’s 2020, what’s happening now isn’t right.”
Major US companies have declared 19th June a paid holiday this year, some for the first time. Ride-hailing service Uber declared Friday a paid day off and several banks such as JPMorgan Chase & Co and Capital One Financial Corp closed offices or branches early.
In New York City, a few hundred protesters mostly wearing masks due to the coronavirus, gathered outside the Brooklyn Museum.
Maxwell Awosanya was handing out free snacks and water to the swelling crowd of protesters outside the museum.
“African-American history is American history. Black history is American history. We need to be heard, we need people to see us..we need to be understood, we need to be seen as equal,” he said.
A diverse crowd, including parents with children in strollers and a large contingent of people on bicycles, marched in downtown Brooklyn, chanting “No justice, no peace” and “Say his name, George Floyd.”
In 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 some 6,000 people to the park will be replaced with a virtual observance.
“There are a lot of people who did not even know Juneteenth existed until these past few weeks,” Bremond said.
Abolition of slavery
Juneteenth, a blend of June and 19th, commemorates the US abolition of slavery under President Abraham Lincoln’s 1863 Emancipation Proclamation, belatedly announced by a Union army in Galveston, Texas, on 19th June, 1865, after the Civil War ended.
Texas officially made it a holiday in 1980, and 45 more states and the District of Columbia have since followed suit. On the West Coast, union dockworkers at nearly 30 ports planned to mark the occasion by staging a one-day strike.
Some 1,500 protesters gathered at the Port of Oakland to join local dockworker unions in the port shutdown. The gathering was due to march to downtown Oakland, with many of the dock workers driving in a caravan along the way.
But much of the focus of the annual observance was taking take place on social media, with online lectures, discussion groups and virtual breakfasts, to guard against coronavirus.
“We have been training our staff on how to use technology to present their events virtually and online,” said Steve Williams, president of the National Juneteenth Observance Foundation.
Many chapters planned “car caravans”: slow-speed processions of motorists honking horns and waving their arms as they wend their way through neighborhoods, Williams said.
A focal point of Juneteenth observances this year is likely to be Tulsa. President Donald Trump is traveling to the Oklahoma city for his first campaign rally in three months, originally scheduled for Friday but moved to Saturday after an outcry.
Tulsa was the scene of a notorious massacre of African Americans by white mobs in 1921.
– With MARIA CASPANI in New York and STEVE GORMAN in Los Angeles.
