Lucy Gellman photos
Marching up Orange Street to East Rock park.
One of the youth leaders of Friday’s liberation march.
Over 500 people filled the streets of downtown and East Rock to celebrate the 155th anniversary of the end of slavery — and to lift up the movement for black liberation that continues to this day.
That joy-filled march and racial justice teach-in took place Friday afternoon in honor of Juneteenth, the annual holiday that commemorates the emancipation of enslaved African Americans in Texas on June 19, 1865.
The marchers filled Elm Street and Orange Street with cheers of “Power to the people!” and “Black joy matters!” as they made their way from the flagpole on the Green to College Woods in East Rock Park.
Marchers then lay out on the grass and sought shade from the afternoon sun as local singers, poets, educators, and community organizers held a teach-in on how the current movement to defund and abolish the police connects to the work done by African American freedom fighters across the centuries.
“This is a day of legacy and tradition where black people fought for liberation and abolishment of systems that harm and are violent to us,” said People Against Police Brutality organizer Kerry Ellington (pictured at left with Citywide Youth Coalition Executive Director Addys Castillo). “And we’re still continuing that conversation and that fight today.”
Friday’s liberation march and teach-in were organized by Citywide Youth Coalition and Students for Educational Justice. It was one of multiple Juneteenth celebrations to take place throughout the city on Friday. And it came on the same day that Mayor Justin Elicker and Board of Alders President Tyisha Walker-Myers declared Juneteenth to be an official city holiday.
The last public demonstration organized by the local youth-led social justice organizations turned out 5,000 people on June 5 for a march from the Green to police headquarters.
During that rally and protest in response to police violence, youth organizers laid out a specific set of political demands regarding defunding the local police department and reinvesting public dollars in social services like affordable housing, education, and health care.
Though Friday’s event was no less political than the one held nearly two weeks ago, the leaders of the Juneteenth liberation march sought to center the joys of being black and the strategies and discussions necessary to win a freer future.
“We’re trying to show folks what liberation looks like,” Castillo said as dozens, and then hundreds, started gathering around the flagpole at 3 p.m. “We’re trying to share black joy, not just black pain.”
The event kicked off with a West African drum circle led in part by New Haven musicians Aly Tatchöl Camara and his son Seny.
Castillo closed her eyes and danced as Tatchöl Camara beat an ecstatic rhythm on his hand drum. A fellow percussionist frequently threw one drum stick 10 feet in the air, let it fall twirling back into his hand, and then effortlessly resumed the beat.
“This is not just a march about Black Lives Matter,” Citywide Youth Coalition community organizer Ta’LannaMonique Miller (pictured) told the hundreds of people assembled before her. “This is a celebration of liberation for black people. Today is Juneteenth, our day of liberation.”
“We gonna march the streets of New Haven in liberation,” she continued. “We gonna be heard. We gonna take space.”
And that’s exactly what the group did.
They marched from the flagpole to Elm Street, east to Orange Street, and then up Orange Street over one and a half miles to College Woods.
Youth organizers held a banner reading, “Black Liberation Day” at the front of the march.
Leading the way just a few feet in front of them was the same quartet of percussionists who had played at the flagpole. Those drummers now sat with their instruments in the back of a flat-bed truck, from where they crafted a joyous soundtrack to the mass demonstration.
East Rock residents opened their windows and stood on their porches as they applauded in solidarity, some throwing fists in the air.
“I love being black!” one marcher broke out in song, to which dozens around her responded as a chorus.
“I said I love being black. I love the texture of my hair. And I will rock it everywhere.”
Teach-in In East Rock
Miller addressing the crowd in College Woods.
After the marchers turned west onto Cold Spring Street and then poured north across the sidewalk and into the park, Citywide Youth Coalition and the Ice the Beef leaders, among others, turned the gathering from a march to a teach-in.
“This is where we do the real work,” Miller said. “We’ve been protesting. We’ve been marching. We’ve been yelling: ‘I can’t breathe.’”
Now is the time to talk with neighbors and peers about how to actually go about dismantling systemic racism, she said. How to end law enforcement as it currently exists and promote a new community-based form of public safety. How to end the “triple occupation” of New Haven, Hamden, and Yale police departments in the Elm City.
“We need to reimagine what New Haven looks like for our black people,” she said. “So this is where we build our army.”
Stationed around the western half of the park were tents where attendees could do just that: one tent for learning about the defund the police movement, one focused on a youth-led vision for the city as mapped out by Citywide Youth Coalition organizers, and one focused on abolishing the Yale PD.
There was also a vision board set up by Yale students working with the city to put together a memorial for New Haveners who have died during the Covid-19 pandemic.
And there was free water, sunscreen, and hand sanitizer at every turn, as well as free food donated by Mama Mary’s Soul Food, Queen’s Kitchen, Hey Cupcake, and McDonald’s.
Before attendees broke out into smaller groups, a handful of musicians, poets, and teachers took the mic to address the crowd as a whole.
Marcey Jones led the group in a collective performance of “Lift Every Voice and Sing,” which is often referred to as the black national anthem.
Ice the Beef’s Javione Hinds (pictured) offered a one-man, acapella rendition of Sam Cooke’s iconic civil rights anthem, “A Change Is Gonna Come.”
Local hip hop artist Kaylib sang an original rap he wrote about the importance of filling out the U.S. Census.
Amelia Sherwood (pictured at left) read to the group from a Juneteenth-focused children’s book called All Different Now.
And Hartford poet T’challa Williams (pictured) held hundreds with rapt attention as she read two of her poems, “Sunrise” and “Murdering-ish”.
“I am the daughter of revolution,” Williams read towards the end of her performance of “Sunrise.”
“Telling you our solution is love.
Love so strong that you won’t let nothing treat what you love wrong.
No matter how big, well-funded or great,
If you coming for the people,
Then destruction is your fate.
We are the people’s army,
And it’s already too late.”
Lucy Gellman contributed to this report.
Love. Love. Love.