Black Student Union hosts early Juneteenth

Penn College’s Black Student Union hosted the college’s third Juneteenth celebration in late April. While the federal holiday – also known as Emancipation Day or Freedom Day – is observed on June 19, the April event allowed the college to celebrate while most students were still on campus. As part of the celebration, BSU offered an array of activities and fellowship on the patio of the Bush Campus Center, and the gathering enjoyed lovely spring weather. 

Juneteenth commemorates the date (June 19, 1865) when members of the enslaved community in Galveston, Texas, were finally informed they had been freed (2.5 years after the Emancipation Proclamation declared that, beginning Jan. 1, 1863, “all persons held as slaves … shall be then, thenceforward, and forever free.”).