Lawrence Juneteenth group announces call for voting rights essays by highschoolers
The Lawrence, KS Juneteenth Organization is offering cash prizes for winning essay submissions from 9th – 12th grade students on the topic of voting rights.
The Lawrence, KS Juneteenth Organization is offering cash prizes for winning essay submissions from 9th – 12th grade students on the topic of voting rights.
“As of June 18, 2021, Juneteenth is recognized as a national holiday. But the end of slavery was also a sweeping national declaration, and yet the material conditions of Black people were left largely unimproved,” Jameelah Jones writes.
Jerome Edwards said during a panel Saturday that Juneteenth is a celebration of the abolition of slavery — but the penal system is part of slavery. He and other panelists said the “so-called justice system” needs to be dismantled.
Black Literature & Arts Collective of Kansas (B.L.A.C.K.) Lawrence will celebrate Juneteenth and the release of Tai Amri Spann-Ryan’s book of poetry on Friday.
With uncertainty surrounding the situation with COVID-19 and health regulations — but also with certainty that they’d have plenty more than 50 people in attendance — the Lawrence, KS Juneteenth Organization planned a virtual celebration this year.
The organizer of the Black Summer Juneteenth BBQ, slated for Saturday, has planned a big event — but she still wants to make it bigger.
Each year since 2016, when she was 89, Opal Lee has walked from her home in Fort Worth across the country, stopping everywhere from Washington, D.C. to North Carolina to Kansas, in an effort to make Juneteenth a national holiday.
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