Yorktown Commemorates Juneteenth for First Time

For the first time in Yorktown’s history, the town’s elected leaders are officially commemorating Juneteenth. The Town Board voted unanimously Tuesday night to approve a proclamation declaring June 19 Juneteenth Day.

Juneteenth is the end-of-slavery commemoration that marks the 1865 arrival of Union troops in Galveston, Texas to enforce the Emancipation Proclamation that had been issued two and a half years earlier.

“This is an important educational moment for many people,” Supervisor Matt Slater told the Town Board on Tuesday night. “I’m a product of the local school district. I frankly wasn’t aware of this day, of Juneteenth, and its meaning until I was out of school….It has a really profound meaning for a lot of people and I think it’s important for the town and the Town Board to recognize the day and its meaning.”

Councilwoman Alice Roker noted that Yorktown, like many other farming communities, had slaves.  She spoke about a book in the Town Clerk’s Office in which some farmers recorded the birth of children born to slaves.  The book also recorded manumissions that took place in the Town of Yorktown.  The Act of Manumission was passed by the New York State Legislature in 1842, it gave some slaves the ability to be set free by their owners. 

Councilwoman Roker explained that Juneteenth is important because it marked the official end to legal slavery in the United States. She also linked the lack of widespread knowledge about Juneteenth to the civil rights protests that have swept the country since the death of George Floyd in Minneapolis on May 25.

“I know you didn’t learn about (Juneteenth) in school and neither did I. I learned about it in church,” said Councilwoman Roker. “And I think very often when it comes to why we’re seeing people out in the streets today, a lot of it has to do with when we go to school. What are we learning? If all people were brought into the conversation, all Americans, regardless of where your ancestors came from, we would not be having these kinds of problems.”