Juneteenth Flag Returns To The Green

Top: Dr. Hanan Hameen Diagne and CT CHRO's Cheryl Sharp. Bottom: William Fluker. Lucy Gellman Photos. 

The sound of William Fluker’s trumpet sailed across the New Haven Green, bringing passers-by suddenly to attention with the melody of “We Shall Overcome.” At first, it was a slow, buttery sound, a silky edge to the notes. Then, just a hint of a keening, round and full as it rose toward the sky. Deep in my heart/I do believe, he played, and a few people hummed along quietly.  We shall overcome, some day.

From his place atop the Green’s memorial fountain, Vance Solman began to raise Ben Haith’s Juneteenth flag, a trio of ropes steady in his hands. He watched the flag, a bolt of blue and red with a starburst of white in the center, make its slow ascent. For a moment, he wondered why it hadn’t started flapping in the wind. Then it caught a breeze, and took flight. 

That scene—and a call to remember and teach the full breadth of history—came to the New Haven Green Monday afternoon, as members of the Official Juneteenth Coalition of Greater New Haven (JCGNH), International Festival of Arts & Ideas, and the Connecticut Commission on Human Rights and Opportunities joined artists, onlookers, and city officials to announce a jam-packed lineup of Juneteenth events in and beyond downtown New Haven. 

This year, the coalition’s theme is “Together In Truth.” Beginning June 15, events kick off with a Juneteenth restaurant week, followed by an annual hip-hop conference, “Juneteenth Jamboree,” day-long vendor village and sonic journey with the Black violinists Sons of Mystro. As in years past, it is spearheaded by the JCGNH in collaboration with Arts & Ideas, which has brought Juneteenth events to the Green for over a decade. 

“Let’s not only remember why we need this flag, why we need this day, let’s also remember why we are here, what our purpose is,” said Dr. Hanan Hameen Diagne, president of the Official Juneteenth Coalition of Greater New Haven and the founder and director of the Artsucation Academy Network. “This year, our theme is ‘Together In Truth.’ That’s what we need right now. We need to be together in our collective truth … because this is a collective effort. This is our Juneteenth.”

“This is the 160th year of celebrating Juneteenth,” added her mother, fellow JCGNH organizer Iman Hameen. “Think about that. One hundred and sixty years ago was the first celebration, and it’s still going on. People ask now, because of anti-DEI, ‘What are you gonna do? Are you gonna celebrate Juneteenth?’ We have been celebrating Juneteenth for 160 years, and we’re certainly not stopping now.”

Juneteenth recognizes the emancipation of enslaved Black people in Galveston, Tex. on June 19, 1865, a full two years after President Abraham Lincoln signed the Emancipation Proclamation. The date marked the formal end of chattel slavery in the United States. It did not mark the end of the economic enslavement and disenfranchisement of Black Americans, which continues today. 

Mayor Justin Elicker, who pointed to Juneteenth as a chance to talk about the way white supremacy still shows up in society. "Let's talk truth, right?" he said. "While technically emancipation has happened, we still do not have full emancipation as a society. We have systemic racism that continues to exist, and particularly today, there are people out there that are trying to undermine the work that has been done and to stymie progress. And it is at this moment that we need to double down on the work that we are doing to confront racism."

This year, the activities are meant to channel that history, as they walk a line between celebration, multi-modal artmaking and storytelling, and reflection. From June 15 to 22, Juneteenth Restaurant Week unfolds across the city, with stops at Black-owned businesses like Sandra’s Next Generation and Jazzy’s Cabaret among others (last year, participating restaurants ranged from Raw Juicescape and Ninth Square Caribbean downtown to Wing Madness on Dixwell Avenue).

During that time, the Juneteenth Coalition and Arts & Ideas will also be bringing several days of performance to the Green and the Audubon Arts Corridor. After the seventh annual hip-hop conference on Juneteenth itself (that event, which features a keynote from Dead Prez, is at the Neighborhood Music School; more information here), events continue with a “Juneteenth Jamboree” with Jose Cadelario, Keepers of the Culture, and the Rahsaan Langley Project on Friday evening. 

Then on Saturday June 21, the Coalition is back with a day-long Juneteenth Village and marketplace with Black-owned businesses, artists, and nonprofits. The festivities conclude Sunday evening with a concert from Black violinists Umoja and Malcolm McNeish, who perform as the musical duo Sons of Mystro. All of those events are free and open to the public. 

For the first time this year, the JCGNH will also be raising Juneteenth flags in several of the city’s neighborhoods including Fair Haven, the Hill, and Long Wharf. The last is steeped in Black New Haven history: it is where free Black engineer William Lanson transformed a port into a hub of commerce and commercial activity in the nineteenth century..

“This is the place to be,” Hameen Diagne said. “So bring your families for the whole weekend.”

The day began fittingly with "Lift Every Voice and Sing."

The Green feels particularly significant, she added: it is a site of both lived and inherited trauma, where enslaved Black people were sold as property until 1825. That sale, of mother and daughter Lucy and Lois Tritton, has only recently become a history New Haven is willing to reckon with. In that sense, a multi-day celebration of Juneteenth is also a kind of reclamation. 

The Green also sits on unceded (or unwillingly ceded) Quinnipiac and Wappinger land, a reminder that America was built on stolen land by stolen people. 

Throughout Monday’s flag raising, participants stressed the specific need for truth-telling—and understanding the full breadth of American history—at the current political moment, as the U.S. veers sharply towards an authoritarianism that is increasingly anti-Black, anti-LGBTQ, anti-immigrant, anti-science and anti-history. Cheryl Sharp, deputy executive director of the CT Commission on Human Rights and Opportunities (CT CHRO), urged attendees to teach each other accurate, factual history and to speak out where they see injustice—or watch the clock turn back hundreds of years. 

“Our nation is crying out right now,” she said, praising both Hameen Diagne and Iman Hameen for the work they have done to breathe history into the city’s Juneteenth recognition (musician Jesse Hameen II has also been a powerful part of those celebrations). “It is time to take a stand. It is time to resist. It is time to come forward and say, ‘We are stronger together,’ and we can only do it with members of our community who are willing to take a stand. Who do not submit to fear.” 

Artists Tracey Massey and Sharmont Influence-Little. 

Joe Davis, the founder of the African American Lodge 024 in Hamden (the building is home to the budding African American Society #024), remembered growing up in a segregated North Carolina, where he was forced to enter businesses through a back entrance, use a different bathroom, and drink from a different drinking fountain because he was Black. While that may no longer be his reality, the history doesn’t seem so far removed at all. 

“To envision what we have accomplished today, even though there is still more to accomplish, is to be commended,” he said. 

That message echoed as New Haven Poet Laureate Sharmont Influence-Little took the mic, exploring the universes of pain and resilience that a single smile can hold. Performing his poem “Smile,” the poet tunneled through centuries of American history, from the pain of enslavement to the explosive creativity of hip hop, from policing to abolition, from LGBTQ+ rights to access to abortion.

“I think about the era of where we’re in today, as my people, I think of our resilience to continue smiling in the face of things that are happening,” he said. “And how my ancestors smiled in different forms and how a smile means so much.” 

That smile extended to Solman, fresh off his first flag raising, as he came back down from the fountain and headed towards a Parks Department truck parked on the Green’s lush grass. A lifelong New Havener and former member of EMERGE, Solman said he was thrilled to raise the flag Monday, in part because it represents “freedom, power, [and] a sense of belonging” that he hasn’t always felt around the date. 

Growing up in New Haven, “I didn’t participate” in any Juneteenth events, he said—not because he didn’t want to, but because they didn’t exist for him at the time. There wasn’t yet the same amount of education or attention around the holiday as there is today. Decades later, he’s glad to see that the day has such a place of prominence in the heart of New Haven. So when colleagues at the Parks Department asked if he was interested in raising the flag, it was an easy yes. 

“It was a wonderful feeling,” he said. “All these experiences are beneficial.”