Elizabethtown celebrates inaugural Juneteenth celebration

ELIZABETHTOWN — Alan Adams, a distant nephew of the late Harriet Tubman, found his way to the inaugural Juneteenth celebration in Elizabethtown.

“This is the first time that we ever had this type of event,” Adams said. “We want to keep it going and have more people.”

Vanessa McKoy made her way from New York to spend time with family over the summer.

McKoy said that being at the event was fascinating because, although she knows what slavery is, she did not know all the things that people in North Carolina have been through before the ending of slavery in the United States. She looks forward to escaping the New York winter and spending the time here in North Carolina.

The celebration also had a COVID-19 vaccination clinic with five people running the show. Dr. Terri Duncan, the county health director, said their presence was necessary to help get as many people as possible vaccinated against the illness raging across the nation.

“I think this event will cause people to be more aware and it will just bring the community together to spread that awareness,” Angelica Hicks with the vaccination clinic said.

“People celebrated before by choice but now it is memorialized,” Jackie Bradley, also with the vaccination clinic, added. “It’s a great day.”

The celebration had a couple dozen participants, which event coordinator the Rev. Barbara Cogdell attributed to other celebrations across the counties plus the fact that were three funerals of well-known people in the community at the same time as the event.

Cogdell was there with her husband and her granddaughter, Jurnee McNeill. Cogdell and McNeill wore matching Juneteenth T-shirts to celebrate the occasion.

“It was not just black people fighting for their freedom,” Cogdell said of the Americans who helped stop slavery. “White people that were involved helped because we weren’t listened to. Therefore white people were involved with freeing us. I thank God.”

The event coordinator passed out cards explaining what Juneteenth was, which is a day that “commemorates African American freedom and emphasizes education and achievement. It is a time for reflection and rejoicing.”

Juneteenth commemorates the emancipation of enslaved people in the United States.

Arthur Bullock, who was in charge of cooking for the event, said that the first MLK Day parade only had eight participants at the beginning and now it has over one hundred. Thus, he predicts that the event will only grow in size as the years go on. He said that it was a good event nevertheless.

The event consisted of the welcome and invocation from the Rev. Maria Lacewell, and remarks by the Rev. Corey Lyons and the Rev. Dr. Louis Boykin.