Wednesday, June 22, 2022 — 3 
News
The Michigan Daily — michigandaily.com

Second Juneteenth Annual 
Symposium opens with 
Opal Lee and discussions of 
healing
UMich welcomed the start of the Second Annual Juneteenth 
Symposium on June 15, held in collaboration with the Ann Arbor 
branch of the NAACP

The University of Michigan 
recognized the start of the Second 
Annual Juneteenth Symposium on 
June 15, a four-day event held in 
collaboration with the Ann Arbor 
branch of the National Association 
for the Advancement of Colored 
People (NAACP). With “Celebrate, 
Educate, Inspire” as this year’s 
theme, the symposium will take 
place from June 15 to June 18 and will 
include a series of speeches, panels, 
workshops and performances to 
celebrate Black excellence and bring 
attention to issues that concern the 
Black community. The majority of 
the events will be held in a hybrid 
format 
with 
pre-registration 
required. 
Juneteenth 
celebrates 
the 
emancipation of enslaved African 
Americans following the end of the 
Civil War. Though the Emancipation 
Proclamation declaring freedom for 
all enslaved peoples in the rebelling 
states went into effect in 1863, 
slavery was not officially ended 
across the United States until the 
ratification of the 13th Amendment 
in 1865. In Texas, slavery continued 
for two years after the passage of 
the Emancipation Proclamation, 
until General Order No. 3 — which 
is dated June 19, 1865 — informed 
the state’s enslaved people of their 
legal freedom. Juneteenth has been 
celebrated on June 19 across the 
United States since the 19th century, 
but it was not until June 17, 2021 
that President Joe Biden signed 
Juneteenth’s status as a federal 
holiday into law. 
On the first day of the symposium, 
activist Opal Lee, also known as 
the “Grandmother of Juneteenth,” 
talked about her journey of fighting 
to make Juneteenth a federal 
holiday in her opening keynote 
speech. Since 2016, Lee has led 2.5-
mile walks in various cities to bring 
attention to Juneteenth. The walks 
symbolize the number of years that 
it took for news of the Emancipation 
Proclamation to reach Texas in 1865. 
In September 2016, Lee left 

TINA YU 
Daily Staff Reporter

CAMPUS LIFE

Fort Worth, Texas, and began her 
1400-mile trek across the United 
States, ending on the steps of the 
U.S. Capitol. She hoped to speak 
directly 
with 
President 
Barack 
Obama about making Juneteenth a 
federal holiday. In 2021, she started 
a petition for a federally-recognized 
Juneteenth holiday on Change.org.
The petition received support from 
multiple celebrities, including Sean 
“P. Diddy” Combs and Usher. Her 
years of activism eventually led to a 
Juneteenth holiday being signed into 
law in 2021—with Lee in attendance.
During 
her 
opening 
keynote 
speech, Lee talked about the moment 
she found out that Biden would sign 
the bill making Juneteenth a federal 
holiday. 
“P. Diddy helped me get 1.5 million 
signatures to take to Congress,” Lee 
said. “We took them to Congress 
and we were ready to take that many 
more when we got the word to go to 
the White House, that the president 
was going to sign the Juneteenth bill 
into law.” 
Lee discussed the role of education 
in freeing people from homelessness 
and unemployment, as well as 
providing the freedom to be who they 
are. 
“The recognition is for all of us 
to be free,” Lee said. “We realize 
that we have a common goal, and 
that is to dispel the disparages that 
we have in this country. I’m talking 
about (how) we need books in the 
education system to tell the history as 
it occurred. We can erase history, and 
so we need to learn about it. We need 
to be able to be sure (history) doesn’t 
happen again. Freedom is the thing 
that I’ll cherish.” 
Lee said freedom should be 
valued, celebrated and fought for by 
everyone. 

“What we need to know is this is not 

a Black thing,“ Lee said. “(It) is not a 

Texas thing. Freedom is for all of us, and 

none of us are free until we’re all free … 

So (white people have) got to learn that, 

hey, this is for you too. And I advocate 

that we celebrate freedom from the 19th 

of June to the Fourth of July.”

Courtesy of Roni Kane

Read more at michigandaily.com

Hundreds of Washtenaw-Wayne County 
community members “March for Our 
Lives” in wake of Uvalde school shooting

Over 400 Washtenaw-Wayne county community members gathered in the Diag to 
encourage law makers to take measures to end gun violence

Over 400 voices rang out in unison 
over the Diag Saturday morning 
with a message for state and U.S. 
legislators alike: “stop the silence, 
end gun violence.” Organized by 
high school students from the Ann 
Arbor and Plymouth-Canton areas, 
the 
Washtenaw-Wayne 
County 
March for Our Lives was one of over 
450 local marches that happened 
across the country on June 11. 
The national call to action was 
sparked in the wake of the May 24 
shooting at Robb Elementary School 
in Uvalde, Texas, which resulted 
in the death of 19 students and two 
teachers — just one of the more than 
240 mass shootings so far in 2022. 
Guns have been the leading cause 
of death for U.S. children and teens 
since 2020.
When the March for Our Lives 
movement was initiated in 2018 
following the shooting at Stoneman 
Douglas High School in Parkland, 
Fla., it was seen as a testament to the 
efficacy of student activism. During 
the movement’s first year, marches 
all around the U.S. — including the 
main protest in Washington, D.C. — 
were organized primarily by middle 
and high school students. Over 4,000 
people attended the first student-
lead rally in Ann Arbor alone.
The return of the March for Our 
Lives movement on Saturday was a 

result of renewed student activism 
calling for gun reform. Around six 
local high school students who are 
a part of the Washtenaw-Wayne 
County chapter of March for Our 
Lives orchestrated Saturday’s protest 
on the University of Michigan’s Ann 
Arbor campus, including Plymouth 
High School rising senior Kavya 
Keshavamurthy.
Keshavamurthy said she went on 
a virtual call with leadership from 
the national March for Our Lives 
organization and chapter leaders 
from all over the U.S. shortly after 
the massacre in Uvalde. It was there, 
she said, that March for Our Lives 
announced its intent to once again 
incite a wave of protests after four 
years. 
She and the rest of the Washtenaw-
Wayne chapter immediately began 
organizing the march in Ann Arbor. 
Keshavamurthy said she hopes 
Michigan legislators in Lansing and 
on Capitol Hill will hear the echoes 
of their chants, will see the faces of 
the protestors in the media and will 
be moved to pass bills addressing 
gun reform and mental health.
“The overarching goal of our 
march is basically to send a message 
to our legislators,” Keshavamurthy 
said. “Our politicians can no longer 
just get away with thoughts and 
prayers. They need action.”
The Washtenaw-Wayne County 
chapter of March for Our Lives is 
currently co-lead by two recent Ann 
Arbor Public Schools graduates: 

RONI KANE 
Daily News Editor

Rhiannon Hubbard, who graduated 
this year from Pioneer High School, 
and 
Christine 
Kang, 
who 
just 
graduated from Skyline High School.
The pair stood before the crowd to 
kickoff Saturday’s protest by listing off 
the numbers 58%, three million and 
one million: 58% for the majority of 
Americans who have experienced, or 
know someone who has experienced, 
gun violence in their lifetime; three 
million in regards to the number of 
American children who witness gun 
violence on an annual basis; and one 
million for the number of women 
alive today who have been shot at by 
their partner.
They warned the crowd to not 
let these statistics become mere 
numbers or to accept them as facts, 
but to fight to decrease the number of 
lives affected by gun violence.
“We have seen so many acts of 
gun violence that we allow these 
numbers to remain numbers, but we 
must never let that happen,” Kang 
told the crowd. “There are friends, 
families and communities behind 
these numbers.”
In an interview with The Michigan 
Daily, Hubbard and Kang highlighted 
one final statistic, but this time it was 
a number they felt encouraged by.
“I am so grateful and proud of 
the over 400 people who showed up 
today to march with us to end gun 
violence,” Kang said. “I can’t even put 
into words how powerful this all felt.”

Read more at michigandaily.com

