Mayor, City Council proclaim June 19 as Juneteenth Day in Dover

posted on: 6/14/2021

Mayor Robert Carrier and the Dover City Council proclaimed Saturday, June 19, 2021, as Juneteenth Day within the City of Dover at its City Council meeting Wednesday.

The proclamation notes the anti-slavery sentiment in Dover, including the election of Dover’s John Parker Hale as the first anti-slavery senator elected to Congress. It also acknowledges the history of enslaved people in Dover.

“Juneteenth affords us an opportunity to acknowledge our nation’s past history of enslavement and to celebrate the emancipation of those who had been enslaved here in the United States,” Carrier read from the proclamation. “It is an especially important day to recognize the sanctity of freedom while ensuring the equal treatment, respect, understanding and acceptance of all persons today and into our future.”

Juneteenth celebrates June 19, 1865, when the Union Army delivered the news of President Lincoln’s Emancipation Proclamation to Texas residents that all those enslaved were now free. It came a little over a month after the end of the American Civil War and more than two years after the Emancipation Proclamation was issued. The state of New Hampshire began observing June 19 as Juneteeth after the governor signed the bill into law on June 19, 2019.

Black Heritage Trail of New Hampshire states, “Juneteenth is the oldest known nationally celebrated event commemorating the end of slavery in the United States.” Black Heritage Trail is hosting numerous events from June 17-19 commemorating Juneteenth, including a workshop, concert, lecture, and ancestor reverence drumming and dance. Find more information here: https://blackheritagetrailnh.org/2021-juneteenth-celebration/.

The complete proclamation reads as follows: 

Proclamation

WHEREAS:         Juneteenth commemorates the end of slavery in the United States, and Dover recognizes both its historic significance and its own longstanding involvement in the cause of emancipation, with an anti-slavery movement beginning in the 1830s, thirty years before slavery’s actual abolishment in the United States.; and

WHEREAS:          In 1833, The Morning Star moved to Dover, New Hampshire, becoming the City’s first anti-slavery newspaper; Dover subsequently was the first New Hampshire city to send to the state Legislature, members who espoused strong anti-slavery sentiment. And at the federal level, Dover's John Parker Hale would become the first anti-slavery Senator elected to Congress; and

WHEREAS:          Despite a strong anti-slavery sentiment noted in Dover’s history and the prominence of Dover citizens in advocating for the abolishment of slavery, census and other written records indicate that there still were persons in Dover who were subjected to being enslaved; and

WHEREAS:          On June 26, 1857, an act entitled “An act to secure the freedom and rights of citizenship to persons in this State” was passed in New Hampshire, making it a crime to hold slaves and further stating: “That neither descent, near or remote, from a person of African blood . . . nor color of skin, shall disqualify any person from becoming a citizen of this State, or deprive such person of the full rights and privileges of a citizen thereof”. In 1861, the New Hampshire Supreme Court affirmed the constitutionality of this act prohibiting slavery throughout New Hampshire; and

WHEREAS:          After years of being one of the only remaining states that did not recognize Juneteenth as a state holiday, New Hampshire enacted legislation for an annual observance of the day as an officially recognized state holiday, which statute is now codified as RSA 4:13-aa; and

WHEREAS:          Even though it is joyously celebrated, Juneteenth serves as a reminder of the grief and anguish our nation has experienced over the lives lost and the dreams destroyed by slavery and acts of racially motived violence, abuses of power, and injustice; and

WHEREAS:          We must all remember this day as a solemn reminder that words alone cannot deliver on the promises of freedom, individual rights, and equal justice for all. Although our nation has come a long way from our history of state-sanctioned slavery and segregation, our work remains unfinished; and

WHEREAS:          Juneteenth affords us an opportunity to acknowledge our nation’s past history of enslavement and to celebrate the emancipation of those who had been enslaved here in the United States. It is an especially important day to recognize the sanctity of freedom while ensuring the equal treatment, respect, understanding and acceptance of all persons today and into our future.

NOW, THEREFORE, I, ROBERT CARRIER, MAYOR OF THE CITY OF DOVER, NEW HAMPSHIRE, AND THE ENTIRE DOVER CITY COUNCIL DO HEREBY PROCLAIM JUNE 19, 2021 as

JUNETEENTH DAY