As the United States marks only the second federally recognized Juneteenth, Black Americans living overseas have embraced the holiday as a day of reflection and an opportunity to educate people in their host countries on Black history.
BANGKOK — Black Americans have been celebrating since the last enslaved people were told they were free in Galveston, Texas, on June 19, 1865, two years after President Abraham Lincoln’s 1863 Emancipation Proclamation.
Liberia, Africa’s oldest independent republic, was founded by freed slaves repatriated to West Africa from the United States in 1822, exactly 200 years ago this year. This weekend’s event will include a trip to Providence Island, where former slaves settled before moving into what is now mainland Monrovia.
She moved to South Korea in 2019 and will celebrate Juneteenth on Sunday with a group of drag performers at a fundraising brunch for the Marsha P. Johnson Institute.has become this like whole, ‘Put it on a T-shirt, put it on ice cream tubs’ type of thing,” she said. “But as a Black person within the Black community I’m like, ‘Yeah, let’s celebrate us.’”Chrishan Wright in New Jersey regularly speaks with Black Americans who plan to or already have made the move abroad.
LaTonya Whitaker, from Mississippi, has lived in Japan for 17 years. She is executive director of Legacy Foundation Japan, which hosted a Juneteenth gathering of about 300 people at the ritzy Tokyo American Club on Saturday.Like Whitaker, many Black Americans at the Juneteenth event came to Japan almost by coincidence, as Christian missionaries or Peace Corps volunteers. But they made Japan their home.“I realized we really need a community,” said Whitaker.
In Taipei, Toi Windham and Casey Abbott Payne are holding multiple events to celebrate Juneteenth. The two, part of Black Lives Matter Taiwan, are hosting performances by Black artists and musicians.Windham has lived in Taiwan for five years, and had always celebrated Juneteenth growing up in Texas. For her, it’s an opportunity to educate people about a different part of American culture, even the darker parts.
“As a kid, I remember the street being lined with street vendors, and there’s music going on and there’d be the Juneteenth parade rolling through,” he said.In Bangkok, a group called Ebony Expats organized a silent movie screening, a bike ride in a nature reserve and a dinner for at a Jamaican restaurant serving jerk chicken and pumpkin soup.
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