Associate Dean Hickman-Maynard (STH’15) shares Thoughts on Juneteenth
As Boston University officially observes the Juneteenth holiday this year, we invite our community to meditate on the words that STH Associate Dean Teddy Hickman-Maynard shared with us on Juneteenth, 2020.
“As a 1st generation US citizen – the son of immigrants from Panama and Barbados – I have been grafted into the Black American story. While all descendants of enslaved Africans across the Americas share certain communal memories, Juneteenth is a uniquely African-American legacy. Its commemoration testifies to the wide expanse between the promise of freedom and its manifestation in lived experience. It is an expanse that typifies not only the distance that the Union army traversed to carry Lincoln’s proclamation to Galveston, TX; it also reflects the all-too-deep chasm between America’s proclamation of equality and the lived experience of Black people in the US to this day. And yet, Juneteenth is a “celebration” because it also testifies to the collective hope and power of African-Americans who, despite the persistence of savage racial inequalities, continue to work to make this country as good as its promise.”