Juneteenth celebrated at Johnson House

by Walt Maguire
Posted 6/23/21

The first national Juneteenth holiday and the 15th year of the Johnson House commemoration in Germantown was last Saturday, June 19.

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Juneteenth celebrated at Johnson House

Posted

The first national Juneteenth holiday and the 15th year of the Johnson House commemoration in Germantown was last Saturday, June 19.

Germantown Avenue was closed to traffic from Washington Lane to Johnson Street, with street vendors, music, Johnson House history presentations at one end and a large stage at the other.

Juneteenth officially became a national holiday on June 17; ironically, its first time as a holiday was a Saturday. The date commemorates the day the last slaves were freed in the United States, at Galveston, Texas, on June 19, 1865, when Union troops arrived to enforce the Emancipation Proclamation. Pennsylvania made it a state holiday in 2019.

The stage featured musical acts, dance troupes, and Philadelphia Poet Laureate Trapeta Mayson. Vendors lined the street, and food stands carried “smash” burgers and salmon steak sandwiches. Young American Cider and Attic Brewing had a beer garden, with proceeds going to the Johnson House. Little Einstein had a bounce castle (unthinkable this time last year, possibly the first one in town this season), plus pony rides and goats from the Goat Project.

Like the Fourth of July, Juneteenth is more about history then hamburgers. In the cemetery adjoined to the 1775 one-room Concord School House, there was an open-air fabric art exhibit among the colonial headstones. At Johnson House, there were presentations, including a history lesson by Harriet Tubman (Millicent Sparks) in the garden. Unlike the Fourth, Juneteenth carries reminders of current issues for the Black community – police reform, voting rights, white supremacy, reparations, Black Lives Matter – not just a commemoration of how long emancipation took to reach Texas.

Online, there were panels on gun violence and the history of segregation.

The 1768 Johnson House at Germantown Avenue and Washington Lane was a stop on the Underground Railroad. The Johnson family was active in multiple abolitionist groups, and sheltered escaped slaves, even hiding them in a secret attic space. Harriet Tubman stayed here. The Germantown Quaker Petition against slavery was drafted nearby in 1688 by the Quakers and Francis Daniel Pastorius.

Cornelia Swinson, Executive Director of the Johnson House, has been one of the organizers of the Germantown event since it began in 2006, and is protective of the reputation of Juneteenth as a day to mark progress and look to the future. While there have been other, sometimes larger events around Philadelphia in recent years, this was the first Juneteenth event in the city.

Councilwoman Cindy Bass and State Rep. Chris Rabb were the final speakers of the day, Bass joking that their remarks would be brief as the first raindrops landed. Referencing the new national holiday status, Rabb said, “I want to honor everyone here, and all the people who lived the reality, fifteen years before the politicians acknowledged the centrality of the struggle.” Then the downpour started, and the crowd stepped away.