The city will not hold the Black History Parade this spring, but there could be a Juneteenth festival on the horizon.
The Black History Committee met last week and agreed not to hold a Black History Parade this year but expressed interest in an event commemorating Juneteenth.
“The next parade will be scheduled for February, 2023,” said Acting Assistant City Manager Brenda Harvey-Williams. “The Committee would like to participate in planning a larger Juneteenth celebration.”
According to Harvey-Williams all committee members present agreed to serve on a committee to plan and organize that event.
Juneteenth is celebrated on June 19 and commemorates the end of slavery in the United States.
Last year, more than a hundred area residents gathered to celebrate the federal holiday with speeches, awards and music at Charles White Park in Altadena.
The city announced the cancellation of the annual Black History Parade last month due to the spread of the Omicron virus.
Soon after that Councilman Steve Madison expressed an interest in the committee reconvening to discuss holding the parade in the spring.
City Manager Cynthia Kurtz said she supported the idea provided the event could be held safely.
On June 19, 1865, two and a half years after President Abraham Lincoln signed the Emancipation Proclamation, Union soldiers, led by Major General Gordon Granger, landed at Galveston, Texas with news that the war had ended and that the slaves there were free.
President Joe Biden signed a bill last year making Juneteenth a national holiday after the House and the Senate passed the bill in a rare showing of bipartisanship.
The holiday commemorates the end of chattel slavery in the United States.
The total slave population in the South eventually reached four million by 1860.
As the country expanded, the Southern states attempted to extend slavery into the new western territories to allow proslavery forces to maintain their power in the country. The controversy over the expansion of slavery into new territory was one of the issues that led to the Civil War.
President Lincoln eventually signed the Emancipation Proclamation, which only freed slaves in confederate states waging war against the union, leaving Black people in border states that remained loyal to the Union in bondage.
Pasadena was incorporated on June 19, 1886 and many abolitionists came to the Pasadena/Altadena area, including Ellen Garrison Clark and John Brown’s son Owen, who is buried in Altadena.
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