ANN ARBOR, MI — Mayor Christopher Taylor announced plans this week to make Juneteenth, a day celebrating Black freedom from slavery in the United States, an official city holiday.

With the annual celebration coming up June 19, Taylor said he’s working on a resolution with other City Council members to recognize the third Saturday in June as Juneteenth and make it a permanent municipal holiday in Ann Arbor.

“Juneteenth is a day of remembrance, and resolve,” he said in a statement. “A day to celebrate emancipation and to honor the strength, endurance and dignity of the African Americans subjected to the atrocity of American slavery.”

It’s a day for the entire community to join together to acknowledge the central and shameful role of slavery and government-structured racism in society and to commit to end slavery’s enduring legacy of race-based discrimination and institutional racism, Taylor said.

Taylor said he wants to acknowledge the leadership of the Ann Arbor Branch of the NAACP, which has celebrated Juneteenth in Ann Arbor for decades. He worked with local NAACP President William Hampton, other community leaders, city staff and Council Members Lisa Disch, Kathy Griswold and Travis Radina to develop the resolution on council’s next agenda.

The resolution notes the holiday originated in Texas, commemorating the June 1865 announcement by Union Army General Gordon Granger, who landed in the port city of Galveston and proclaimed freedom from slavery in Texas, following the surrender of Confederate General Robert E. Lee to Union General Ulysses S. Grant two months earlier.

The June 1865 announcement of the order freeing slaves in Texas was preceded by President Abraham Lincoln’s Emancipation Proclamation two and a half years earlier, and the “time chasm” between those two events became the first of many instances of “justice delayed is justice denied,” states the proposed resolution recognizing Juneteenth in Ann Arbor.

“This enduring legacy manifests itself starkly in the city of Ann Arbor and greater Washtenaw County,” it states.

“The candid acknowledgment of this history and this present is necessary if we, as a nation, state or city, are to be successful in our effort to build a truly equitable, diverse community that exemplifies and promotes the fundamental American values of freedom, equality, liberty and justice.”

Hampton said he’s originally from Texas, so he has celebrated Juneteenth as long as he can remember.

“We celebrate Juneteenth before we celebrate July 4 because it was more important to us than July 4 was, so I’ve been celebrating Juneteenth from my earliest memory,” he said.

Ann Arbor’s official recognition of it is exciting, Hampton said. He’s been in Ann Arbor since 1976 and the NAACP has organized a Juneteenth celebration here each year since 1994, starting in Wheeler Park, which is named after Ann Arbor’s first and only Black mayor, Albert Wheeler, he said.

Last year, it was celebrated with a march from Fuller Park to Wheeler Park, followed by virtual presentation due to the COVID-19 pandemic, Hampton said.

With the pandemic ongoing, another virtual celebration is being planned for Juneteenth this year, he said.

“Last year’s theme was March for Racial Justice, and we’re in the process of coming up with a theme for this year. We’re looking at something like Emancipation, But Are We Free?” he said. “As you know, the worst of the great pandemic, COVID-19, has exposed a whole lot of shortcomings in America as it relates to African Americans, like access to health care, like equal treatment in the criminal justice system, and I can go on.”