By Terence P. Ward in HudsonValley1 on June 10, 2024
The fourth annual Juneteenth jubilee celebration of triumph and history and learning about Juneteenth with the New Paltz community will take place on Wednesday, June 19. It will begin at 10 a.m. with a one-hour commemoration ceremony at the New Paltz Rural Cemetery. It will be followed by a community drum procession at the Margaret Wade-Lewis Center for Black History & Culture, located at 5 Broadhead Avenue. This all-day extravaganza will continue until 4 p.m. on the lawn at Historic Huguenot Street and will include lunch, story-telling, musical performances and tours to help honor and remember the formerly enslaved Africans that were integral to the Village of New Paltz’s history. A movie, to be determined, will be screened at Elting Memorial Library at 7:30 that night.
Students from the Ulster BOCES Center for Innovative Teaching & Learning (CITL) at Port Ewen have been participating in a series of educational activities as part of a collaboration with the Witness Stones Project — a non-profit educational initiative whose mission is to restore the history and honor the humanity of the enslaved individuals who helped build our communities — and Historic Huguenot Street in New Paltz. Together they have commemorated the lives of Anthony and Susanna, two individuals who were enslaved at Huguenot Street in the 1600s.
The project will culminate during the Juneteenth public celebration at Historic Huguenot Street on June 19, where students will present their work and pay tribute to Anthony and Susanna. During the ceremony, two memorial stones will be dedicated on Huguenot Street, marking the first time such a project has been undertaken at this historic site.
The project began in January when Lindsay Dalton, school programs manager at Historic Huguenot Street, approached CITL teacher Jessica Pedro after a successful field trip to Historic Huguenot Street. Enlisting the help of CITL reading specialist Catherine Pine, they initiated the curriculum, integrating activities designed to educate students about Anthony and Susanna’s lives and the broader context of slavery in the Northeast. This immersive learning experience included vocabulary lessons, video discussions on dehumanization, and creative assignments where students crafted poems, songs and historical fiction to reconstruct and honor the stories of Anthony and Susanna.
At the Juneteenth ceremony, selected students will present their narratives, contributing to a broader community recognition of these historical figures. Students’ work will also be displayed on a bulletin board at Elting Library in New Paltz for a month following the ceremony.
More information about the New Paltz Juneteenth celebration can be found on the Dr. Margaret Wade-Lewis Black History Cultural Center Facebook page or visiting their website at mwlcenter.org.
