Antioch College will observe the Juneteenth holiday on June 18, 2021. Juneteenth was adopted as an official holiday following a motion brought before College Council in June 2020 by current student and member of the Board of Trustees Chris Chavers ’21. College offices will be closed in observance.
Juneteenth commemorates the date in 1865 when Union troops traveling through Texas arrived at their last stop in Galveston to deliver the news to still-enslaved Black people that the Civil War had ended two months earlier, and that they were free. Many slaveholders in Texas had withheld this information. Rather than dwell on the duplicity of the slaveholders, in the following years, the newly freed and other Black people throughout the South chose to mark the date by celebrating their freedom with public gatherings that included food and music. This year marks the 156th celebration of Juneteenth.
In a message to the campus community the Senior Vice Presidents wrote, “Join us in grappling with our past, and working diligently towards centering, uplifting and celebrating new narratives, and new ways of being, that allow us all to walk into a more just future.”
Learn more:
