Glen Cove Public Library Celebrates Juneteenth

The Glen Cove Public Library celebrated Juneteenth on June 17 with a full day of events featuring lectures, artwork, a book signing, crafts, food and music.

“Thank you to everyone who made this wonderful event possible and celebrated freedom and independence with us,” the Glen Cove Public Library stated on its Facebook page.

According to Reuters, Juneteenth, a combination of the words June and 19th, is also known as Emancipation Day. It commemorates the day in 1865, after the Confederate states surrendered to end the Civil War, when a Union general arrived in Texas to inform a group of enslaved African

Americans of their freedom under President Abraham Lincoln’s 1863 Emancipation Proclamation.

U.S. President Joe Biden signed a bill declaring it a federal holiday in 2021. Activities included a plant exhibit highlighting the commercial crops such as sugarcane, cotton, indigo and tobacco that slave labor was used to harvest; a talk on the African American 15th New York National Guard Unit, The Harlem Hellfighters; an author visit from Kim Taylor, who wrote A Flag for Juneteenth; a story quilts display and fabric postcard craft; a cookbook potluck using recipes from The Rise: Black Cooks and the Soul of American Food;