Vashon celebrated one of America’s oldest and most enduring holidays June 19 at Vashon Center for The Arts (VCA), commemorating the anniversary of Juneteenth with conversations and direct action around equality and freedom.

Alexia Jones, from Atlanta, Georgia, sang “Ella’s Song” and introduced the event Wednesday, capturing both the accomplishments of Juneteenth and the realities of the work still ahead for real freedom and equality.

“We celebrate this triumphant day as we salute our ancestors for all their blood, sweat and tears, while enduring the hardship of slavery,” Jones said.

Juneteenth is a testament to what a commitment to freedom looks like for those still without it, Jones said: “To our sisters and brothers in Sudan, in Haiti, in Gaza — in every place in the world, there is no freedom. … (And) we continue to dream of a day where freedom rings for everyone.”

Juneteenth is the oldest known celebration of the end of slavery in the U.S. Commemorated annually on June 19, it marks the day in 1865, at the end of the Civil War, when Union troops arrived in Galveston and informed enslaved people in Texas that they were free, under the enforcement of the Emancipation Proclamation.

The holiday was first commemorated in Galveston as early as 1866 and spread across Texas and the entire country until, in 2021, following a year of nationwide protests against police brutality, Congress and President Joe Biden passed legislation making Juneteenth a national holiday.

Speaker Nan Wilson shared her personal connection to the holiday — her paternal family was in Galveston in the early 1800s — and read the famous General Order #3, which announced: “The people of Texas are informed that in accordance with a proclamation from the executive of the United States, all slaves are free.”

But even as that order heralded the end of chattel slavery, it revealed fears and anxieties toward those Black people who were now no longer subject to be legally treated as another human’s property.

“The freed men are advised to remain quietly at their present homes and work for wages,” Wilson recited, in a wry tone that highlighted the attitudes present in the order. “They are informed that they will not be allowed to collect at military posts, and they will not be supported in idleness, either there or elsewhere.”

Yasmin Ravard-Andresen sang “Lift Every Voice and Sing,” a hymn often referred to as “the Black National Anthem.” The hymn’s length and its demands on singers, Ravard-Andresen said, reflect the resilience of the Black community in the face of slavery.

“It’s long for a reason,” she said. “It was a long time. We had many verses we needed to sing.”

And Ravard-Andresen drew connections between the injustice and horror visited upon enslaved Black Americans with other American stories — from the forced removal of Indigenous people from their ancestral homelands, to those who came to this country fleeing violence and strife; to the forced removal and incarceration of Japanese-Americans and others during World War II.

Islander Joe Okimoto, one of the Americans who was unconstitutionally uprooted and forced away from home in 1942, spoke to the fears and hatreds that bind those chapters of American history at the Juneteenth event.

“Juneteenth … continues to give us hope for a better and freer tomorrow,” he said. “But while we celebrate progress, we must also remain vigilant in knowing that there are those who want to destroy the progress towards a more free and just society.”

The event culminated that evening with a group action — the Juneteenth Committee provided letters, addressed to island political representatives, and encouraged attendees to write, in their own words, messages supporting the development of the Seattle Indian Health Board’s Thunderbird Treatment Center. (The center, which will comprise a 92-bed residential treatment center for recovery from addiction, faces pushback from some islanders. The Beachcomber will publish an update on the treatment center in the near future.)

Doing so is a way of taking “abolitionist, collective action,” Ravard-Andresen said — which mirrors the words “Abolition is…” that display prominently on the VCA building facing Vashon Highway. And supporting Indigenous projects and sovereignty is part of an “intertwined struggle for liberation” shared with Juneteenth, she said.

As attendees wrote letters, Tacoma-based guitarist and singer Kim Archer filled VCA with soulful strumming.

Social Justice Movie Series

The Vashon Island Unitarian Universalists will host a “Social Justice Summer Movie Series” throughout July and early August at Lewis Hall, located at 23905 Vashon Highway SW behind the Burton Community Church.

The films, which will be shown on Sundays from 10 a.m. to 12 p.m. and accompanied with discussions, are subject to change but currently include:

July 14: “Misdemeanor,” which explores the country’s history of racial injustice and how it plays out in the criminal justice system.

July 21: “Silver Dollar Road,” which follows a Black family in North Carolina who are harassed for decades by developers eager to take their waterfront property.

July 28: “The Riot Report,” a PBS film exploring the consequences of the Kerner Commission and its findings on violence in American cities in 1967.

August 4: “Healing Childhood Trauma.”

Vashon’s Juneteenth Commission assembles for a picture at Vashon Center for The Arts. Front row, from left to right: Leah Okamoto Mann, Kendra Johnson, Juniper Rogneby and Anjali Andersen. Back row, left to right: Joe Okimoto, Bett Capehart, Nan Wilson, Tisha Durahim, Ty Cunningham, Alexia Jones, Christina Arthur and Yasmin Ravard Andresen. (Alex Bruell photo.)

Atlanta, Georgia’s Alexia Jones, the founder of a nonprofit recovery organization, introduced the Juneteenth event at Vashon Center for The Arts on June 19. (Alex Bruell photo.)

Light dapples the inside of Vashon Center for The Arts as Yasmin Ravard Andresen presents to a crowd of about 50 people. (Alex Bruell photo.)

An attendee at Vashon Center for The Arts writes a letter as part of the Juneteenth celebration’s workshop to support the upcoming Thunderbird Treatment Center. (Alex Bruell photo.)

Nan Wilson spoke about the legacy of Juneteenth and the order delivered in Galveston, Texas, during an event June 19 at Vashon Center for the Arts. (Alex Bruell photo.)