Du Bois Center to celebrate Juneteenth in Great Barrington

GREAT BARRINGTON — On June 19 in 1865, cries of freedom and liberty flooded the streets of Galveston, Texas, as residents finally learned the civil war was over and slavery had been abolished. Though the Emancipation Proclamation became effective in 1963, it wasn’t until the surrender of Confederate General Robert E. Lee in 1865 that the new executive order was finally enforced. Since then, June 19, known as Juneteenth, has become nationally recognized as the end of slavery.

And on that day, people of all races and nationalities come together to celebrate and commemorate those who pioneered the path to freedom.

This Saturday, The W.E.B. Du Bois Center in Great Barrington will host an outdoor Juneteenth celebration to kick off the Lift Ev’ry Voice Festival, a month-long annual celebration of African-American heritage in the Berkshires.

DuBois was a prominent figure in the Civil Rights movement, an activist, writer and scholar, and one of the founders of the NAACP. He was born in Great Barrington.

Beside the Mahaiwe Cemetery, where Du Bois buried his first wife and their infant son, the Du Bois Center “provides a gateway into W. B. Du Bois’ life,” explains Randy Weinstein, executive director of the Du Bois Center.

This year is the 50th anniversary of Du Bois’ death and the 150th anniversary of the Emancipation Proclamation. At the Juneteenth celebration, nationally acclaimed historians and performers will honor those who fought for emancipationand Civil Rights, said Weinstein, “from a black private who was enlisted in the 54th Regiment Infantry to the General and Chief of the Union Army, Ulysses S. Grant.”

Historians Clifford Oliver and David Levinson will discuss Frederick Douglass and the 54th Massachusetts — one of the African-American military units in the Civil War — and the internationally recognized band Magpie will revive the music of the war years.

“Magpie is a wonderful music group that has done tremendous work around civil war music,” said Scott Christianson, author, activist and co-host of the Juneteenth celebration.

Greg Artzner and Terry Leonino of Magpie have been playing together for 40 years and married for 31. They have produced musical programs for the Smithsonian Institution and other museums and schools. With guitar, mandolin, dulcimer and harmonica, their music will invoke the force and loss of the 1860s and the 1960s and tell the stories of legendary freedom-seekers like John Brown and Harriet Tubman.

“We try to tell the story as they might have said it,” said Artzner. “We’re known as musical historians.”

Through classic folk rhythms and original lyrics, they make their music a forum to talk about social justice, environmental issues and historical events.

“All war is devastating,” said Leonino, “and a lot of our music really sets the stage for people to understand how it was during that time.

Christianson, long-time journalist and author of “Freeing Charles: The Struggle to Free a Slave on the eve of the Civil War,” also works with social justice issues involving the history of slavery and the presence of slavery in today’s culture. At the event, he plans to discuss his research on slavery as well as other variations of imprisonment.

“For many people, Juneteenth symbolizes the centuries-long struggle to end slavery in America,” he said, “but it is also a time to realize that slavery still exists in the world in a number of forms.”

The exploitation of migrant workers, sex trafficking and penal labor, all forms of slavery, are still alive, he said.

Juneteenth performances will include a dance performance by Pittsfield’s Youth Step Alive Team and poetry readings, and guests will get a glimpse of artifacts from the 1860s, including an original sketch of Robert E. Lee surrendering to Ulysses S. Grant at the Appomattox Courthouse in 1865.

They can also meet history in person. Re-enactors will bring historical figures to life. Historian Steve Trimm will appear as Ulysses S. Grant.

Trimm is a tour guide at the New York historic sight Grant Cottage, which marks the place of Grant’s death in 1885. He knew very little about the former President when he first joined the Grant Cottage, he explained, and in six years of researching Grant he has uncovered some unexpected depths in Grant’s character.

“I was stunned to discover that as President, [Grant] wasn’t nearly as bad as I was lead to believe,” said Trimm.

He will reflect on Grant’s unconventional perspective.

Grant, the son of an abolitionist, married into a slave-holding family. But over the years, Trimm explained, Grant “evolved both ethically and morally.”

Grant announced the ratification of the 15th Amendment, guaranteeing the right to vote to all races, and therefore to black men, and he signed enforcement acts to protect black voting rights.

“In fact, he was a real champion of Civil Rights,” Trimm said.

And Grant signed the Civil Rights Act of 1875, which guaranteed equal treatment in public accommodations — including schools and stores — and in public transportation.

When Rosa Parks kept her seat on the bus, and the NAACP supported sit-ins at drug stores and lunch counters across the South, they were fighting for the rights Grant had fought for, and signed into law, nearly a century before.