MONTICELLO, NY — “The Juneteenth event in Sullivan has been celebrated for years,” wrote Sandra Johnson-Fields, President of the Sullivan County chapter of the NAACP, in an email.

“Every year, we’ve added more to the celebration,” she continued. “Last year was the first parade,” and it marked the first year Juneteenth was a federal holiday.

This year, the parade has more partners in the community, more family activities and includes the county at large.

Teach your children well

Since Juneteenth is a federal holiday, kids are given the day off school, but this year’s celebration gives them plenty of chances to keep learning.

Juneteenth, Johnson-Fields said, is important; “it is part of American history.”

This year, there’s an emphasis on schools and kids in the Monticello celebration. School superintendents, staff, and the students themselves—from across the county—will march and join the activities afterward.

Maybe that awareness of the importance of education is partly down to Johnson-Fields herself—she is a former principal of the Cooke Elementary School.

Juneteenth was always taught in Texas and in some schools throughout the country, she said. “It was and is a big celebration in Galveston, TX, since 1865. Currently, all schools in New York teach” about the day.

Now that it is a federal holiday, she added, more Americans will learn about it and celebrate the day of freedom too.

Why does it matter?

“Juneteenth teaches students historical awareness,” Johnson-Fields said. “It helps them understand the legacy of slavery, the struggles faced by Black people in the United States and the ongoing fight for equality.”

It’s a chance for teachers—and parents—to help kids learn about diversity, empathy and cultural understanding, she said. A chance to gain a broader perspective on this country’s past.

“Students will learn to analyze the past to make connections to current historical events and social justice.”

This kind of learning isn’t the sort of thing a kid remembers just long enough to pass a test. It goes deeper. It changes people.

Kids can learn to think independently, Johnson-Fields said. They can challenge the biases they encounter or that they inherited.

Maybe they can learn to talk to each other in a way that doesn’t involve screaming, name-calling or defining a person by the color of their skin.

Education is vital for another reason.

In Pearl Zayas’ story on the Black Library, Douglas Shindler and Michael Davis (page 13), Davis noted, “[The slaves] knowing they were free was the mark of the Juneteenth celebration… [This] education being kept from us, I believe, especially in the public school system, was incredibly ironic because it was the same kind of story playing over and over again.”