Community leaders and change-makers commemorated Juneteenth through the county’s own local history at Glen Echo Park.
It was 63 years ago when Howard University students and Jewish residents came together to protest in order to desegregate the Glen Echo Amusement Park.
Some white protesters purchased tickets for Black residents so they could participate.
“So I came in and bought them,” said Joan Trompauer Mulholland, a protester in 1960 who went on to become a Freedom Rider.
“There may be the back of a bus, but there’s no back of a carousel, so it was a good place, so I bought the tickets and handed them out,” said Mulholland, who said she does not consider herself a hero but a “good troublemaker.”
Sunday was the “Festival of Freedom,” the final event of a week-long series of events for Juneteenth presented by the Glen Echo Park Partnership for Arts and Culture and the Washington Revels.
“The protests that happened here would not have happened without Juneteenth,” said Tamara Williams, Executive Director of the Washington Revels.
Juneteenth recognizes the day when a U.S. General came before a crowd in Texas to read the general order implemented by Abraham Lincoln legally freeing enslaved people. It was June 19, 1865 — more than two years after the Emancipation Proclamation.
African Americans have celebrated the day as a “second Independence Day,” as previously stated by County Councilmember Will Jawando.
“We’re reminded today as we take this historic ride and honor these folks whose backs and shoulders we stand on, that we’re still on that ride, and we’re still working to make sure that this system is more fair and more just,” Jawando said during Sunday’s event.
