(19 Jun 2025)
RESTRICTION SUMMARY:
ASSOCIATED PRESS
Portsmouth, New Hampshire -19 June 2025
++STARTS ON SOUNDBITE++
1. SOUNDBITE (English) JerriAnne Boggis, Executive Director, Black Heritage Trail of New Hampshire:
“We’re here in Portsmouth, New Hampshire, at the African Burying Ground Memorial site. And this is no normal burial ground. As you can see, we’re on an ordinary street in an ordinary town. So the African burying ground was built over, covered on, erased from memory.”
2. Wide of people at event, including JerriAnne Boggis, standing and listening to a speaker
3. SOUNDBITE (English) JerriAnne Boggis, Executive Director, Black Heritage Trail of New Hampshire:
“But we’re looking at the same kind of issues today. As we think about the erasure of Black history, we think of the desire of some to not honor this holiday. And right here in New Hampshire, we have laws that tell us we can’t teach this history in our schools. So the Black Heritage Trail is working to raise awareness for these stories. In order to bring people together who are more inclusion, building that, building those bridges for conversation between all of us. Because American history, Black history, is all of our history.”
4. Medium of people at event, including JerriAnne Boggis, standing and listening to a speaker
5. SOUNDBITE (English) JerriAnne Boggis, Executive Director, Black Heritage Trail of New Hampshire:
“Now Granger rode into Galveston, Texas, two and a half years after that proclamation was signed. Because the folks in Texas did not obey the law and the African Americans were still enslaved. So this gave us an opportunity this emancipation of the slaves in Texas turned into Juneteenth.”
6. Group playing horns and xylophone
7. Group beating drums
8. Two men dancing
STORYLINE:
The Black Heritage Trail of New Hampshire’s weekslong celebration culminated with the rededication of the African Burying Ground Memorial Park in Portsmouth and a community dance. But those who planned the history tours, community discussions and other events to commemorate June 19, 1865 — the day Union soldiers brought the news of freedom to enslaved Black people in Texas — also were looking ahead to next year’s 250th anniversary of the signing of the Declaration of Independence.
Executive Director JerriAnne Boggis said her organization and other partners want to highlight contradictions in the familiar narratives about the nation’s founding fathers.
“In a time when efforts to suppress Black history are on the rise, and by extension, to suppress American history, we stand firm in the truth," said JerriAnne Boggis, the Heritage Trail’s executive director. "This is not just Black history, it is all of our history,”
During his first administration, Trump issued statements each June 19, including one that ended with “On Juneteenth 2017, we honor the countless contributions made by African Americans to our Nation and pledge to support America’s promise as the land of the free.”
When White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt was asked during her Thursday media briefing whether the president would commemorate the holiday this year, she replied, “I’m not tracking his signature on a proclamation today.”
New Hampshire, one of the nation’s whitest states, is not among those with a permanent, paid or legal Juneteenth holiday, and Boggis said her hope that lawmakers would take action making it one is waning.
Still, she hopes New Hampshire’s events and those elsewhere will make a difference.
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