To the UConn Community:

On June 19, 1865, two and a half years after President Abraham Lincoln signed the Emancipation Proclamation on January 1, 1863, Union military authorities reached Galveston, Texas, and enforced the executive order to free all people enslaved in Confederate territories. All people held as slaves in Texas were finally free.

On Thursday, June 17, 2021, President Joe Biden signed into law a bill establishing Juneteenth National Independence Day, a federal holiday to commemorate the end of slavery in the United States. The holiday is effective immediately. This designation of Juneteenth Independence Day is  the first new federal holiday since Martin Luther King Jr. Day was created in 1983.

According to Dr. Matt Delmont, a professor of African American history and the history of Civil Rights at Dartmouth College, Juneteenth is about addressing the issues that continue to face the Black community.  Issues such as healthcare and healthcare disparities, racialized violence, systemic racism and the ban on teaching Critical Race Theory (CRT) in classrooms. Dr. Carolyn Calloway, chair of African American and African Diaspora studies at Indiana University states that “Juneteenth is a way of calling attention to some of America’s sins, while acknowledging the beautiful possibilities for redemption.” The national holiday is also, “a reminder of our collective struggle for freedom and a commitment to protect all that it entails, including voting rights and equity in justice,” says Dr. Jeffrey Ogbar, professor of history at UConn.

As a community, we must pledge to continue to raise our voices in support of the abolition of hate and racism, sexism, homophobia, transphobia, anti-Semitism, xenophobia, ageism and oppression.   Let us commit to being the light!

Let us commit to being activists in the spirit of Miss Opal Lee, a 94-year-old Black activist and retired educator who is known as the grandmother of Juneteenth.  Miss Lee has devoted much of her life to a campaign for making Juneteenth a national holiday. In 2016, at the age of 89, Miss Lee walked 1,400 miles from her home in Fort Worth, Texas to Washington, DC in an effort to get Juneteenth recognized as a national holiday 

Darkness cannot drive out darkness, only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate, only love can do that. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.

Happy Juneteenth National Independence Day!

May love fulfill you, may peace enfold you, may hope envelope you!

 

Dr. Frank Tuitt

Vice President & Chief Diversity Officer

Office for Diversity and Inclusion

 

Dr. Willena Kimpson Price

Director – H. Fred Simons African American Cultural Center

Affiliate Faculty,  Africana Studies Institute

To the UConn Community:

As the world watched the trial of Derek Chauvin unfold in Minneapolis this month, culminating in today’s verdict, it was natural for concerned citizens, activists, and commentators to focus on the broader questions raised: police brutality, anti-Black racism, the long struggle for justice in the United States, and more.

But it’s important to recognize that a criminal trial is not a final reckoning with deep-rooted social forces. It is not a quest for larger truths. Criminal trials are, at heart, tests of imperfect evidence related to a specific set of circumstances. Ultimately, this trial told us little more than what 12 citizens of Minneapolis believe about the evidence they were permitted to see in court.

It is up to each and every one of us, and educational institutions like ours, to make sure the larger issues and concerns stemming from the killing of George Floyd are understood, not forgotten, and ultimately addressed.

First, and most importantly, that means a direct confrontation with America’s legacy of anti-Black racism, which continues to blight our society to this day. The truth is clear to anyone who watched the unbearable video from Minneapolis last spring and so many others. There can be no progress as a society until we address the systemic reasons behind it.

These and many related issues don’t have easy answers, and the discussions around them will be passionate, protracted, and difficult. But we must have them, at UConn and throughout society, if we are to make progress toward becoming the kind of society to which our highest ideals aspire.

To that end, the Office for Diversity and Inclusion and the Provost’s Office are organizing a series of panel discussions with thought leaders and scholars from across a variety of fields over the coming days, and I invite you to participate.

The outcome of a criminal trial in Minneapolis doesn’t absolve us of the debt we owe to George Floyd, and to future generations. We may face setbacks. We may even fail. But justice – as opposed to the nuances of law – requires that we try.

 

Sincerely,

Tom

Thomas Katsouleas

President

Today’s verdict provides a glimmer of hope in what continues to be a long-standing battle to end systemic racism in the United States and across the globe. However, there is still much work to be done. History has taught us all too well that we must pause, rest, and regroup because the struggle for racial justice continues. As we take solace in the justice delivered today, we remain committed to addressing hate and structural oppression. We want to remind you of some of the resources and spaces that are available to you in the continued struggle for racial justice:

• Anti-Racism Resources
• The Cultural Centers
• Academic Institutes

Also, there will be several events in the coming weeks for us as a community to discuss the implications of this verdict as well as the steps we can take moving forward. In the spirit of Martin Luther King Jr., “there are some things in our world to which [people] of goodwill must be maladjusted” and that includes bigotry, systemic racism, and other forms of hate that deprive people of their humanity. We need to be “creatively maladjusted” to “courageously do battle for truth.”

 

The Office for Diversity and Inclusion