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WOULD YOU LIKE TO LEARN MORE ABOUT JUNETEENTH?

Read these, be inspired by the book list , visit these websites...

FEDERAL HOLIDAY

Spurred on by the advocates and the Congressional Black Caucus, on June 15, 2021, the Senate unanimously passed the Juneteenth National Independence Day Act, establishing Juneteenth as a federal holiday; it subsequently passed through the House of Representatives by a 415–14 vote on June 16.

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For decades, activists and congress members (led by many African Americans) proposed legislation, advocated for, and built support for state and national observances.

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Source: Wikipedia.org

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JUNETEENTH RECIPES

We encourage you to support Black-owned businesses during this celebration, by ordering food from your local Black-owned restaurants and catering services. 

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Do you enjoy cooking? If yes, check out these delicious recipes from Black chefs, to celebrate Juneteenth. Don't be shy about sharing your favorite family dish or recipe with your friends!
Source: Food52.com

Photo by Brazilian Kitchen Abroad

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LEARN FROM THE NATIONAL MUSEUM OF AFRICAN AMERICAN HISTORY AND CULTURE

Juneteenth is a time to celebrate, gather as a family, reflect on the past and look to the future. The National Museum of African American History and Culture invites you to engage in your history and discover ways to celebrate this holiday. 

We will begin this celebration with a rendition of the Negro National Anthem, "Lift Every Voice and Sing." 
Source: NMAHC
Photo: MGN

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Visit NMAMHC's website and explore a wealth of information and suggested activities for the whole family. Plan a trip to D.C., if possible.

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BLACK LIVES MATTER

#BlackLivesMatter was founded in 2013 in response to the acquittal of Trayvon Martin’s murderer. Black Lives Matter Global Network Foundation, Inc. is a global organization in the US, UK, and Canada, whose mission is to eradicate white supremacy and build local power to intervene in violence inflicted on Black communities by the state and vigilantes. By combating and countering acts of violence, creating space for Black imagination and innovation, and centering Black joy, we are winning immediate improvements in our lives.
 

Join the Movement to fight for Freedom, Liberation and Justice, visit https://blacklivesmatter.com

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RECOMMENDED BOOKS 
List Curated by Sandy Holman

Check out these books at your public and school libraries.

Recommend that your library orders several copies if they don't carry these titles. 

Support a local business, order from your local bookstore.

Bryan Stevenson was a young lawyer when he founded the Equal Justice Initiative, a legal practice dedicated to defending those most desperate and in need: the poor, the wrongly condemned, and women and children trapped in the farthest reaches of our criminal justice system. One of his first cases was that of Walter McMillian, a young man who was sentenced to die for a notorious murder he insisted he didn’t commit. The case drew Bryan into a tangle of conspiracy, political machination, and legal brinksmanship—and transformed his understanding of mercy and justice forever.

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Widespread poverty, social unrest, and economic polarization have become our lived reality as the top 1% of the world’s seven-billion-plus population pushes the planet―and all its people―to the social and ecological brink. 
In Oneness vs. the 1%, Vandana Shiva takes on the billionaire dictators of Gates, Buffet, and Mark Zuckerberg, as well as other modern empires like Big Tech, Big Pharma, and Big Ag, whose blindness to the rights of people, and to the destructive impact of their construct of linear progress, have wrought havoc across the world.

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HOW TO BE AN ANTI-RACIST, by Ibram X. Kendi

Antiracism is a transformative concept that reorients and reenergizes the conversation about racism—and, even more fundamentally, points us toward liberating new ways of thinking about ourselves and each other. At its core, racism is a powerful system that creates false hierarchies of human value; its warped logic extends beyond race, from the way we regard people of different ethnicities or skin colors to the way we treat people of different sexes, gender identities, and body types. Racism intersects with class and culture and geography and even changes the way we see and value ourselves. In How to Be an Antiracist, Kendi takes readers through a widening circle of antiracist ideas—from the most basic concepts to visionary possibilities—that will help readers see all forms of racism clearly, understand their poisonous consequences, and work to oppose them in our systems and in ourselves.

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WHITE RAGE, by Carol Anderson

From the Civil War to our combustible present, White Rage reframes our continuing conversation about race, chronicling the powerful forces opposed to black progress in America--now in paperback with a new afterword by the author, acclaimed historian Carol Anderson.

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HOW WE FIGHT WHITE SUPREMACY, by Akiba Solomon

This celebration of Black resistance, from protests to art to sermons to joy, offers a blueprint for the fight for freedom and justice -- and ideas for how each of us can contribute.

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“As we go about our daily lives, caste is the wordless usher in a darkened theater, flashlight cast down in the aisles, guiding us to our assigned seats for a performance. The hierarchy of caste is not about feelings or morality. It is about power—which groups have it and which do not.”
In this brilliant book, Isabel Wilkerson gives us a masterful portrait of an unseen phenomenon in America as she explores, through an immersive, deeply researched narrative and stories about real people, how America today and throughout its history has been shaped by a hidden caste system, a rigid hierarchy of human rankings.

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Short, emotional, literary, powerful―Tears We Cannot Stop is the book that all Americans who care about the current and long-burning crisis in race relations will want to read.
As the country grapples with racist division at a level not seen since the 1960s, one man's voice soars above the rest with conviction and compassion. In his 2016 New York Times op-ed piece "Death in Black and White," Michael Eric Dyson moved a nation. Now he continues to speak out in Tears We Cannot Stop―a provocative and deeply personal call for change. Dyson argues that if we are to make real racial progress we must face difficult truths, including being honest about how black grievance has been ignored, dismissed, or discounted. 

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GRANDPA, IS EVERYTHING BLACK BAD? by Sandy Lynne Holman, Illus. by Lela Kometiani

An illustrated story of an African American boy who comes to appreciate his dark skin by learning about his African heritage from his grandfather.

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John Lewis, who at age twenty-five marched in Selma, Alabama, and was beaten on the Edmund Pettus Bridge, was a visionary and a man of faith. Drawing on decades of wide-ranging interviews with Lewis, Jon Meacham writes of how this great-grandson of a slave and son of an Alabama tenant farmer was inspired by the Bible and his teachers in nonviolence, Reverend James Lawson and Martin Luther King, Jr., to put his life on the line in the service of what Abraham Lincoln called “the better angels of our nature.” From an early age, Lewis learned that nonviolence was not only a tactic but a philosophy, a biblical imperative, and a transforming reality.

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We can be led to act in our own interest as a group if we tune into, and add to, our mental diets, the liberating thoughts that are provided for us in the From The Browder File. No person or group outside of our own is likely to see our need for a collective rebirth of consciousness.

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The National Book Award winning history of how racist ideas were created, spread, and deeply rooted in American society.
Some Americans insist that we're living in a post-racial society. But racist thought is not just alive and well in America--it is more sophisticated and more insidious than ever. And as award-winning historian Ibram X. Kendi argues, racist ideas have a long and lingering history, one in which nearly every great American thinker is complicit.

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In her New York Times bestseller White Rage, Carol Anderson laid bare an insidious history of policies that have systematically impeded black progress in America, from 1865 to our combustible present. With One Person, No Vote, she chronicles a related history: the rollbacks to African American participation in the vote since the 2013 Supreme Court decision that eviscerated the Voting Rights Act of 1965. Known as the Shelby ruling, this decision effectively allowed districts with a demonstrated history of racial discrimination to change voting requirements without approval from the Department of Justice.

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In December 1981, Mumia Abu-Jamal was shot and beaten into unconsciousness by Philadelphia police. He awoke to find himself shackled to a hospital bed, accused of killing a cop. He was convicted and sentenced to death in a trial that Amnesty International has denounced as failing to meet the minimum standards of judicial fairness.

In Have Black Lives Ever Mattered?, Mumia gives voice to the many people of color who have fallen to police bullets or racist abuse, and offers the post-Ferguson generation advice on how to address police abuse in the United States. 

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In this “vital, necessary, and beautiful book” (Michael Eric Dyson), antiracist educator Robin DiAngelo deftly illuminates the phenomenon of white fragility and “allows us to understand racism as a practice not restricted to ‘bad people’ (Claudia Rankine).

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Children from diverse backgrounds celebrate all that they have in common.

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FIVE WAYS YOU CAN MAKE A DIFFERENCE

SUPPORT BLACK-OWNED BUSINESSES

If one doesn't already exist, you can compile a list of Black-owned businesses in your area and share it online. In addition to shopping locally, look up Black businesses for anything needed, including body products, books and house items, that ship nationwide. if you work for an organization (school, non-profit, or else), you can encourage your colleagues to invest in black-owned businesses for their business needs, such as when looking for speakers, web developer or else.

BE PART OF THE CELEBRATION OF THE MOSAIC OF YOUR COMMUNITY

Step outside of the boundaries of people who look just like you. Do a portfolio of support with your talents and resources by being active locally, nationally and globally in some small or large way. If you are a part of dominant culture, use your privilege to advocate for equity, inclusion, justice and change.

EDUCATE YOURSELF AND USE YOUR GIFT TO MAKE A DIFFERENCE

Resist resorting to tokenism, band aid approaches or crisis driven responses, and make a roadmap for holistic change. Start educating your youth early about biases and differences. Consider going through the paradigm for transforming individuals, communities, systems and beyond. Visit The Culture C.O.-O.P.,  www.cultureco-op.com, for further information on ways to bring about systemic change in your community.

SUPPORT MULTICULTURAL EVENTS 365 DAYS / YEAR (366 DAYS ON BISSEXTILE YEARS!)

How culturally diverse are your classroom, business or home scheduled activities? Hire locally, hire people from the cultures you plan to honor, as consultants, facilitators, and more. How frequently does your organization or school hold an equity, diversity and inclusion workshop? How culturally diverse is your playlist? List of books to be read? Movie list? Radio list? Trip planning, local or not? If you are part of the non-dominant culture, do you find ways, small or large, via online posts or community activities, to share your culture with your peers?

PRACTICE MASSIVE SELF-CARE

Do you have a self-care package? Have you inserted breaks in your daily schedule? Have you set time aside (maybe an entire day) to spend time with the family and friends you haven't seen in a while? Have you made an inventory of the stress factors that might impend your sleep schedule or concentration, and created a list of remedies? Make a list of ten favorites activities that relax you, and make sure to integrate them in your routine. Practice massive self-care, so you don't burn out: you matter, you are loved, and your community cares about you.

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JUNETEENTH TRIVIA: DID YOU KNOW?

JUNETEENTH IS NOT THE SAME DATE THAT ENSLAVED PEOPLE WERE SET FREE.

Juneteenth or June 19, 1865 is the day when the people of Galveston, Texas were informed by Major General Gordon Granger that all enslaved people had been freed. This event occurred only two and a half years after Lincoln’s Emancipation Proclamation, because no one told the 250,000 enslaved people in Texas in that they were free. Texas was the last of the southern states to free its enslaved people.

Juneteenth lesson for today: Know your rights.

JUNETEENTH IS ONE OF THOSE EVENTS MOST US HISTORY CLASSES DON’T TEACH IN SCHOOLS.

Many Americans have never even heard of Juneteenth even though it was a major event of Civil War history. In fact, many people have reported being educated  about Juneteenth from the 2017 season 4 premiere of Black-ish. Traditionally, much of Black History is often left out of the US history curriculum including some of the largest incidents of racial violence such as the Tulsa race massacre and the Ocoee Election Day Massacre.

Juneteenth lesson for today: Support (local) efforts to bring Ethnic Studies to your school district, and advocate for an increase Black teachers and staff.

JUNETEENTH DOESN’T JUST CELEBRATE FREEDOM

The day of jubilation and freedom also celebrates Black culture, their contributions and achievements as well as the reflection of racism today and the freedoms Black people are still trying to achieve. Traditional Juneteenth celebrations have evolved over the last century from sharing food, spirituals and dance to conducting parades, reciting of the Emancipation Proclamation and recently protesting police brutality.

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Juneteenth lesson for today: When celebrating a cultural holiday, in the classroom or in community, let's also take the time to honor said culture beyond the food and the dance practices; for example let's support efforts, groups or organizations from these communities, that empower and help bring awareness via a diversity, equity and inclusion framework. 

JUNETEENTH IS GROWING AS A NATIONALLY RECOGNIZED HOLIDAY.

Juneteenth lesson for today: Is Juneteenth celebrated in your community? If not, you can encourage your local educators and leaders to create a celebratory event around it in the classroom and in the city. We invite you to share this page, and to look for local celebrations in your area.

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