Beacon Hill marks Juneteenth with calls to protect education, pursue reparations

Years after Massachusetts and the federal government moved to make Juneteenth an official holiday in the United States, local leaders urged policymakers Wednesday to keep pushing for reforms on education, reparations, freedom, and equality. The holiday marks the day in 1865 when enslaved people in Galveston, Texas found out they were free after the Civil War and more than two years after President Abraham Lincoln’s Emancipation Proclamation. Sen. Lydia Edwards, a Boston Democrat, said people were enslaved for two more years because “they were kept in the dark, because they were kept ignorant of their rights.” “The ability to enslave people is directly connected to the ability to prevent them from being educated, from being able to read, from being able to know what they are deserving of, what they are born with, to know their own history,” Edwards said during a Juneteenth Flag raising ceremony at the State House. Edwards said advocates and elected officials need to fight “vigilantly to assure that there’s freedom in our education.” “The minds of our youth are being attacked with horrible narratives that somehow learning about the imperfections of this country makes us weaker. It makes us stronger. Love is true if it’s...