Officials note anniversary of slavery’s end

BREWER – Community leaders marked a freedom milestone Tuesday within the shadow of a local Civil War hero.

At a park named for Brewer native and Battle of Gettysburg hero Joshua Chamberlain, the NAACP chapter and the mayor of Brewer commemorated the end of slavery in the United States.

In some cases, June 19, 1865, has been used as that milestone.

That was when Union soldiers landed at Galveston, Texas – two months after the South had surrendered – and announced that the slaves in that area were free. The occasion is sometimes called Juneteenth.

The holiday, also known as Freedom Day or Emancipation Day, has been celebrated at Chamberlain Freedom Park in Brewer for the past two years, and “we hope that it continues to be held here every year until the end of time,” Mayor Michael Celli said at Tuesday’s gathering.

He read a proclamation declaring June 19 “Juneteenth Celebration Day.”

“In America we have stuff you can’t put a price tag on – freedoms and liberties,” he said.

Celli said the nation’s system isn’t perfect, but “we continue to try and fix it.”

Part of Tuesday’s commemoration included placing two wreaths on the base of a statue in the Chamberlain park of a slave emerging from an Underground Railroad tunnel. Some in the area have contended that the Underground Railroad, a network of escape routes for slaves seeking freedom, extended to Brewer, but no evidence of that has been confirmed.

Chamberlain, who was considered a hero for his leadership in the Battle of Gettysburg, went on to become governor of Maine and president of Bowdoin College.

Tuesday’s event was sponsored by the local chapter of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People and the University of Maine Human Rights Coalition.

Slavery did not end neatly.

President Abraham Lincoln’s Emancipation Proclamation was issued Jan. 1, 1863 – six months before Gettysburg. Ironically, it freed slaves only in areas of rebellion, but allowed slavery to continue in the border states such as Maryland and Kentucky.

Slavery was finally abolished when the 13th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution was enacted in 1865.

“It’s hard to imagine,” Orono resident Dan LaPointe, Greater Bangor chapter of the NAACP executive board member, said after the ceremony.

After a century and a half of struggle over discrimination and bias over a person’s skin color, gender or culture, the United States finally is experiencing a good level of acceptance, LaPointe said. However, generations that did not experience the racial strife of the civil rights battles of the 1950s and 1960s may not understand the hurdles that have been overcome.

“Our history has forgotten how we got here,” he said. “It’s so easy to forget what it took.”

And although advancements have been made, there still is prejudice, said James Varner, former president of the Bangor area’s NAACP chapter.

“We still suffer from it today,” he said. “My pink brothers and sisters need to know it was wrong.”

Laila Sholt-Zames, co-chair of the University of Maine Human Rights and Awareness Coalition, added that “it doesn’t just affect African-Americans” and that over the years, “a lot has been done to raise awareness of human rights.”

In addition to Celli, LaPointe, Varner and Sholt-Zames, Tuesday’s commemoration was attended by two other NAACP members, three city officials, a public works employee, who blocked traffic, and local media.