The
Northern Nevada Black Cultural Awareness Society celebrated Juneteenth
2010 on Sunday, June 13, at Wingfield Park on the river in downtown
Reno. Actvities for children were conducted as was a basketball tournament,
music and other entertainment and merchandise vendors. Admission was
free. Stay tuned for next year. Info (775) 378-8792 or 354-2985.
On
June 19, 1964, the Civil Rights Act of 1964 was approved after surviving
an 83-day filibuster in the United States Senate. (NY Times/AP
headlines)
Roy
Wilkins/Arlington National Cemetery/June 19, 1963:
"Medgar Evers believed in his country. It now remains to be seen
whether his country believes in him."
On this date in 1862, slavery
was outlawed in the Territory of Nevada and other U.S. territories
(see below); in 1865, three years after Lincoln issued the
legally invalid Emancipation Proclamation, African Americans in Texas
were told, incorrectly, that the proclamation had freed the slaves,
the day becoming known among blacks as Juneteenth; in
1865, the first of several meetings called to organize to support
"equal rights before the Law to all the Colored Citizens of the
State of Nevada" was held in Virginia City; in 1963, assassinated
civil rights leader Medgar Evers was buried in Arlington National
Cemetery; in 1964, after they voted for the cloture motion that ended
the filibuster against the 1964 civil rights bill and guaranteed
its approval, senators Edward Kennedy and Birch Bayh
with Marvella Bayh and Kennedy aide Edward Moss took
a small private plane from D.C. to West Springfield, Massachusetts,
for the Massachusetts Democratic Convention and the plane crashed
enroute, killing pilot Ed Zinny and Moss and breaking Kennedy's
back (the Bayhs got him out of the plane in case it caught fire and
then went for help); in 1967, Jack Edward Cossins of Henderson,
Nevada, died in Gia Dinh Province, Vietnam (panel 22e/row 0100 of
the Vietnam wall); in 1970, Pvt. Mark Crouse of Yerington,
Nevada, was wounded in action in Cambodia with a foot injury and shrapnel
in the back and arm; in 2004, a marker was dedicated in Virginia
City commemorating African Americans on the Comstock near the site
of the Boston Saloon, an African American owned business of the 1860s
that was the subject of a 1999 dig by archeologist Kelly Dixon.
CHAP. CXI. An
Act to secure Freedom to all Persons within the Territories of the
United States.
Be it enacted by the Senate and House of Representatives of the United
States of America in Congress assembled, That from and after the passage
of this act there shall be neither slavery nor involuntary servitude
in any of the Territories of the United States now existing, or which
may at any time hereafter be formed or acquired by the United States,
otherwise than in punishment of crimes whereof the party shall have
been duly convicted. APPROVED, June 19, 1862.
