Today marks the holiday Juneteenth - a day honoring the emancipation of enslaved people in Galveston, Texas (2 years after the Emancipation Proclamation.) Sadly, this holiday is new to me - even at as someone with a BA in history. This is unacceptable and I will not repeat this educational whitewashing with my own children.
Since I am still learning about the holiday, I figured that many of you must be as well. So, I wanted to share how I plan on honoring the day with my family this year:
- Participating in the Juneteenth Storytime on The Conscious Kid with Henry, Nora, and Gus.
- Making art work inspired by Nicole's work on The Polished Playhouse and decorating our front picture window with the project we create.
- Using sidewalk chalk to wish our neighbors a happy Juneteenth - hopefully inspiring anyone who doesn't know about the day to google it
- Downloading the Juneteenth Joy activity pack from Afrocentric.Montessori
- I will personally be tuning into this broadcast to learn more about Juneteenth for myself
- I will be reading, following, and sharing from the Juneteenth Joy series on IG and I encourage you to do the same! Follow @afrocentric.montessori @hood_montessorian @montessori_madre @jenilebrooks @joymarilie @littlemissgirlchild @lyric_laughter_learning @polishedplayhouse @raisingyannis @schoolathomeandbeyond to follow along.
- I will be contacting my federal representatives and sharing that they should support efforts to make Juneteenth a federally recognized holiday.
- Our weekend food pickup will be from a Black owned restaurant
If you are looking for some more ways to honor Juneteenth this post and this post (on Facebook) both have ideas. Next year I hope to be more prepared with books for my children. I will not link them here, but please go buy them from a Black owned bookshop.
