Juneteenth

JUNETEENTH

Juneteenth is the oldest nationally celebrated commemoration of the end of slavery in the United States.    Today is the 143rd year which commemorates African American freedom and ephasizes education and achievement.  

Nowhere in the annals of history has a people experienced such a long and traumatic ordeal as Africans during the Atlantic slave trade. Over the nearly four centuries of the slave - which continued until the end of the Civil War - millions of African men, women, and children were savagely torn from their homeland, herded onto ships, and dispersed all over the so-called New World. Although there is no way to compute exactly how many people perished, it has been estimated that between thirty and sixty million Africans were subjected to this horrendous triangular trade system and that only one third-if that-of those people survived...'

excerpt from the introduction by Dr. John Henrick Clarke from THE MIDDLE PASSAGE, Tom Feelings