Northeastern University
Juneteenth Celebration
Thursday, June 13, 2024
Panel Discussion “Understanding Today’s Reparations Movement”
The state of reparations for African Americans is a topic of ongoing debate and action at various levels of government and within different organizations. The movement for reparations seeks to address the historical injustices and enduring impacts of slavery, segregation, and systemic racism. “Understanding Today’s Reparations Movement” will include a panel discussion of the present-day movement and understanding the various levels – federal, state, local, institutional and public opinions – involved. Additionally, the discussion will explore the historical impacts of the systemic social, educational, and spiritual legacy of slavery that manifested in public policy and efforts to overcome barriers toward equity and inclusion.
- Moderator: Dr. Régine Jean-Charles, Dean’s Professor Culture and Social Justice; Director Africana Studies
- Panelists:
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- Deborah Jackson, Northeastern’s Reparations Research Team
- Ashley Adams, Northeastern’s Black Reparations Project
- Joseph Feaster, Esq., City of Boston Reparations Task Force
- Elizabeth Tiblanc, Embrace Harm Report
- Kyera Singleton, Tufts University’s Reparations Research Team
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- Time: 11:30 am-1:00 pm ET
- Location: The John D. O’Bryant African American Institute
Celebration Festival
The Juneteenth outdoor festival celebration will involve commemoration, education, and community engagement. There will be historical reflection, respectful observance, African dance and cultural performances, family-friendly activities, food and refreshments, music, exhibits from local businesses and Northeastern’s Cultural Centers. Coupled with the panel discussion, the celebration will create a meaningful and memorable event that honors the past, celebrates the present, and inspires hope for the future.
- Time: 1:30 pm-3:30 pm
- Location: Centennial Common, Boston CampusThe celebration will be held, rain or shine. Check back here for the latest information on adjustments in the case of inclement weather and other updates.
Register for panel [here]
“You must never, ever give out. We must keep the faith because we are one people. We are brothers and sisters. We all live in the same house: The American house.” — John Lewis
2024 Juneteenth Panel
Moderator
Régine Jean-Charles, Ph.D.
Dr. Regine Jean-Charles is the Dean’s Professor of Culture and Social Justice, Director of Africana Studies and Professor of Women, Gender, and Sexuality Studies at Northeastern University. Her scholarship and teaching in Africana Studies include expertise on Black France, Sub-Saharan Africa, Caribbean literature, Black girlhood, Haiti, and the diaspora. She is the author of Conflict Bodies: The Politics of Rape Representation in the Francophone Imaginary (Ohio State University Press, 2014), The Trumpet of Conscience Today (Orbis Press, 2021), and Looking for Other Worlds: Black Feminism and Haitian Fiction (University of Virginia Press, 2022). She is currently working on two book projects–one explores representations of Haitian girlhood, and the other is a co-authored interdisciplinary study of sexual violence entitled The Rape Culture Syllabus. Dr. Jean-Charles is a regular contributor to media outlets like The Boston Globe, Ms. Magazine, WGBH, America Magazine, and Cognoscenti, where she has weighed in on topics including #metoo, higher education, and issues affecting the Haitian diaspora.
Panelists
Deborah Jackson, JD, Ph.D.
Dr. Deborah A. Jackson is a passionate community leader and advocate. She has used her legal skills and expertise throughout her career to serve the community. In May 2022, she became the inaugural managing director of the Northeastern University School of Law’s Center for Law, Equity and Race (CLEAR), bringing a rich and varied experience to the role. She was a candidate for the US Senate in the 2020 Georgia special election and came in as the second place Democrat and fourth overall in the field of 22 candidates. She served eight years as the Mayor of Lithonia, Georgia, from 2012 to 2020. During her tenure as mayor, she established partnerships that resulted in benefits for the community, including converting a dilapidated strip mall in a brown field to a $12 million 75-unit affordable housing project; renovating a foreclosed property for use as City Hall and community meeting space; and establishing a farmers’ market to address the issue of food insecurity in the area. In addition to her service as an elected official, Dr. Jackson has been active in the community with several organizations and has served in several leadership positions.
Prior to moving to Georgia, Dr. Jackson was active with the National Conference of Black Lawyers and served as the interim National Director. In the international human rights arena, she has been part of several fact-finding delegations to investigate human rights issues throughout the Caribbean, Latin America, Africa, and Asia; and has presented at national and international conferences on various issues.
In her current role as Managing Director of CLEAR, she is serving as the Project Manager for Northeastern’s Research Team for the City of Boston’s Reparations Task Force.
Ashley Adams, Ph.D.
Dr. Ashley Adams serves as Associate Adjunct Professor of Public Policy – Elinor Kilgore Snyder Professorship at Mills College at Northeastern University, Oakland campus, and also holds a special appointment in the Mills College Dean’s Office, for Academic Concerns and Conflict Resolution. She carries a personal perspective in her work, being a descendant of the early settlers of Nicodemus, Kansas, a historic Black town and national federally designated historic site. She is a 4th generation descendant of formerly enslaved people, and her ancestors were also survivors of the 1921 Tulsa Race Massacre in Tulsa, Oklahoma, adding another profound layer to her connection with African American history.
Dr. Adams serves as Board Secretary for the Nicodemus Historical Society and has dedicated her research career to enhancing Black history preservation practices within national, state, and local preservation systems. Dr. Adams’s commitment to African American history is reflected in her collaborations with the National Park Service and the Smithsonian Institution, contributing to the preservation of African American historical sites and narratives. She is a researcher for the African American History and Engagement Project, at the Allensworth State Historic Park in Allensworth, California, another historic Black town founded in 1908. This initiative is led by the California State Parks and the California African American Museum and aims to reveal the lost and under told African American histories of 24 California state parks. In addition, she is a founding Co-Chair for the Mills College Black Faculty and Staff Association. Dr. Adams is also a founding Co-Chair for the Black Reparations Project (BRP) at Mills College at Northeastern University, a new academic initiative for reparations research, education, and tracking.
Joseph D. Feaster, Jr., Esq.
Attorney Joseph D. Feaster, Jr. has been practicing law for 47 years, during which time he has developed an expertise in numerous areas of the law, including corporate, employment and labor, real estate, contract, licensing and zoning, and probate. He currently is Of Counsel at the law firm Dain Torpy Le Ray Wiest & Garner PC., and was Of Counsel at McKenzie & Associates, P.C. for 24 years.
For 5 years, he served as the court-appointed Receiver for Roxbury Comprehensive Community Health Center; he also served as the Interim Town Manager of the Town of Stoughton. Prior to joining McKenzie & Associates, P.C. as Of Counsel in 1998, Attorney Feaster was Of Counsel to the firm of Wynn & Wynn, P.C. Attorney Feaster is also President of Feaster Enterprises, a strategic planning, organizational development, and community outreach consulting firm.
Attorney Feaster previously served as President of the Massachusetts Community and Banking Council (MCBC), Acting Director of Real Estate for the Massachusetts Turnpike Authority, Interim Administrator of the Boston Housing Authority, one of the largest public housing authorities in the country, Assistant Secretary and General Counsel in the Commonwealth’s Executive Office of Administration and Finance, Associate Counsel in Prudential Insurance Company’s Northeast Home Office, and as an attorney at the National Labor Relations Board’s Boston Regional Office. His professional affiliations are numerous, as his expertise is sought within the City of Boston and nationally. Such affiliations and service included serving as a mediator for the Suffolk County (MA) Superior Court Mediation program, as a registered lobbyist in Massachusetts, and as chairman and member of the City of Boston Board of Appeal. Feaster serves as an Executive Committee member of the Massachusetts Association for Mental Health, Inc. (MAMH), as an Advisory Board Member of the Samaritan, Inc., and as a Corporator Emeritus at Northeastern University.
He was appointed by then Boston Mayor Marty Walsh to serve on the Boston Police Department Reform Task Force along with Deputy Superintendent Eddy Crispin and others. He was appointed by Boston Mayor Michelle Wu to chair the Reparations Task Force, to serve as a member of the Boston Executive Order Affordable Housing Advisory Committee, and as a commissioner of the 21-member Black Men and Boys Commission.
Attorney Feaster previously served for 7 terms as chairman of the board of directors of the Urban League of Eastern Massachusetts (ULEM), as president of the NAACP Boston Branch, as vice chairman and board member of Neighborhood Health Plan (NHP), as Speaker of the House of the National Association of Community Health Centers (NACHC), as a board member of the Massachusetts League of Community Health Centers (MLCHC), as a board member of Dimock Community Health Center, which tenure included serving as board chairman and as the Center’s Interim President, and on the Executive Council of the Massachusetts AARP. Attorney Feaster was also a former board member of the National Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights Under Law, past co-chair of the Boston Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights, former board member of the National Alliance of Mental Illness (NAMI) Boston, past board member of Southern New England School of Law (now UMASS Dartmouth Law School), a gubernatorial appointee to the Commonwealth’s Workforce Investment Board, past president of Northeastern University School of Law Alumni Association, past president of Northeastern University School of Law Black American Law Student Association (BALSA); past president of Combined Boston BALSA, past chairman of the Boston Enhanced Enterprise Community Advisory Board, and past co-chair of the Greater Boston Civil Rights Coalition.
Attorney Feaster previously served as the Senior Vice President of Victory Group, a government and community relations firm, as an adjunct professor in Northeastern University’s Master’s in Public Administration program, and as a research associate at the William Monroe Trotter Institute at the University of Massachusetts at Boston.
Attorney Feaster received his BA in political science from Northeastern University, received his Juris Doctor from Northeastern University School of Law, and received an Honorary PhD of Humane Letters from William James College. He has also completed programs at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology’s Center for Real Estate Development and Harvard University’s John F. Kennedy School of Government. Attorney Feaster was initiated into Omega Psi Phi Fraternity’s GAMMA Chapter in May 1968.
Attorney Feaster is admitted to practice before the courts in Massachusetts, the U.S. District Court of Massachusetts, the First U.S. Circuit Court of Appeal, and the U.S. Supreme Court.
He is married to Phyllis Ellison-Feaster; has 2 children, Aalana Feaster, and Joseph Feaster (deceased), and a grandson, Jaedin Feaster.
Elizabeth Tiblanc
Elizabeth is an Afro-Latina who comes to Embrace Boston with roots in arts and education. She holds a BFA from Massachusetts College of Art and Design, and a MEd in Education Policy and Leadership from American University. While working as an artist educator, she collaborated with Boston school communities to develop programming that places arts and culture representative of students’ racial diversity at the center of education. She is dedicated to shifting cultural norms of oppression penetrating communities across generations. She finds joy in cooking and feeding as an act of love and serves her community locally as well as in her parents’ home island of Puerto Rico.
Kyera Christine Singleton
Kyera Singleton is the Executive Director of the Royall House and Slave Quarters. She is also a PhD Candidate at the University of Michigan-Ann Arbor in the Department of American Culture. She is a Postdoctoral Fellow for the Slavery, Colonialism, and their Legacies Project at Tufts University. Between 2021-2023, Kyera Singleton was an American Democracy Fellow, in the Charles Warren Center, at Harvard University. She has held prestigious academic fellowships from the Beinecke Foundation, the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, Emory University’s James Weldon Johnson Institute for the Study of Race and Difference, and the American Association of University Women (AAUW).
As a public history scholar, Kyera is one of the co-curators of the Boston Slavery Exhibit in Faneuil Hall. She was a member of the Table of Voices Cohort at the Museum of Fine Arts-Boston for the Hear Me Now Exhibit: The Black Potters of Old Edgefield, South Carolina. She has been appointed to serve on the City of Boston’s Commemoration Commission and the Special Commission on the 250th Anniversary of the American Revolution for Massachusetts. She also served as an advisor on the Boston Art Commission’s Recontextualization Subcommittee for the Bronze Emancipation Group Statue.
Outside of Boston, she served as a member of the Board of Public Humanities Fellows at Brown University, which brought together a collection of museum leaders from Rhode Island, Massachusetts, and Connecticut. While living in Atlanta, she was the Humanity in Action Policy Fellow for the ACLU of Georgia. As a policy fellow, she focused on mass incarceration, reproductive justice, and voting rights. She created the ACLU-GA’s first podcast series “Examining Justice” in order to highlight the voices of both community activists and policy makers in the fight for racial, gender, and transformative justice.
In October of 2023, she received a Women of Courage and Conviction Award from the National Council of Negro Women and an Official Citation from the Massachusetts’ State Senate for her work in documenting the history of slavery. She is a board member for Mass Humanities and serves on the advisory team for JustFlix, a youth focused storytelling organization in Medford, MA.
The Historical Legacy of Juneteenth
On “Freedom’s Eve,” or the eve of January 1, 1863, the first Watch Night services took place. On that night, enslaved and free African Americans gathered in churches and private homes all across the country, awaiting news that the Emancipation Proclamation had taken effect. At the stroke of midnight, prayers were answered as all enslaved people in the Confederate States were declared legally free. Union soldiers, many of whom were black, marched onto plantations and across cities in the south reading small copies of the Emancipation Proclamation and spreading the news of freedom in the Confederate States. Only through the Thirteenth Amendment did emancipation end slavery throughout the United States.
But not everyone in Confederate territory would immediately be free. Even though the Emancipation Proclamation was made effective in 1863, it could not be implemented in places still under Confederate control. As a result, enslaved people would not be free in the westernmost Confederate state of Texas until much later. Freedom finally came on June 19, 1865, when some 2,000 Union troops arrived in Galveston Bay, Texas. The army announced that the more than 250,000 enslaved black people in the state, were free by executive decree. This day came to be known as “Juneteenth” by the newly freed people in Texas.
Publishers throughout the North responded to a demand for copies of Lincoln’s proclamation and produced numerous decorative versions, including this engraving by R. A. Dimmick in 1864.
The post-emancipation period known as Reconstruction (1865-1877), marked an era of great hope, uncertainty, and struggle for the nation as a whole. Formerly enslaved people immediately sought to reunify families, establish schools, run for political office, push radical legislation, and even sue slaveholders for compensation. Given the 200+ years of enslavement, such changes were nothing short of amazing. Not even a generation out of slavery, African Americans were inspired and empowered to transform their lives and their country.
Juneteenth marks our country’s second Independence Day. Although it has long been celebrated in the African American community, this monumental event remains largely unknown to most Americans.
The historical legacy of Juneteenth shows the value of never giving up hope in uncertain times. The National Museum of African American History and Culture is a community space where this spirit of hope lives on. A place where historical events like Juneteenth are shared and new stories with equal urgency are told.
Smithsonian National Museum of African American History and Culture
* Funding and support provided by the Office of Diversity, Equity and Inclusion, Student Affairs, Cultural, Residential and spiritual Life, the John D. O’Bryant African American Institute and the Department of African American Studies.