Towson University Celebrates Juneteenth All Month

Press release from Towson University: Campus will commemorate holiday with month-long series of events

Juneteenth, also known as Freedom Day, Jubilee Day, Liberation Day and Emancipation
Day, celebrates the emancipation of those who had been enslaved in the United States
on June 19.

In June 2020, President Kim Schatzel announced the community would observe Juneteenth as an administrative leave day for all faculty and staff. Classes were canceled so students might also participate.

Additionally, TU announced that it would observe Juneteenth as a university holiday each year beginning in 2021, the first university in the University System of Maryland (USM) to do so. This year, Juneteenth will be observed on June 18, however, events will be held throughout the month.

“Please join our TU community as we pause to reflect, educate and commemorate Juneteenth
with an in-depth look at our country’s history and current state of freedom,” President
Kim Schatzel told the community.

Towson University campus offices, including the Office of Inclusion & Institutional Equity (OIIE), the Towson University Black Faculty and Staff Affinity Group, the Career Center, the TU Writing Center and the TU Dance Company, have collaborated on a series of events, which are open to the whole TU community.

“Hopefully, these events will not only educate, inspire and move us to reflect on the historical implications of Juneteenth but motivate us to determine our own biases, acknowledge the reality of racial harm and be active seekers for solutions,” says LaVern Chapman, the diversity and inclusion specialist in OIIE.

Chapman, who helped coordinate many of the events, thought about many historical moments
such as slavery, Reconstruction, Jim Crow, the 14th Amendment and the Black Codes, as well as numerous achievements that have been made along the way. She then contacted some prospective presenters to share her thoughts and. from those conversations, the events were created.

While the past will be examined, Chapman says the events will also emphasize the current
disproportionate impacts of housing discrimination, restrictive voting, mass incarceration,
food deserts and a lack of economic investment in communities of color.

“The writer Pearl Buck once said, ‘If you want to understand today, you have to search yesterday,’” Chapman says. “So we have to understand that enslavement is a bridge
to current racial inequity and systemic racism.

Some of the events that will take place during TU’s Juneteenth celebration include:

Thursday, June 10 | 10­–11 a.m. | Zoom event Hosted by Sharon Jones-Eversley, Towson University, and Lorraine Dean, Johns Hopkins University

The presentation will explore Post-Traumatic Slavery Syndrome and its inter-generational
impact on persons of African descent in America, particularly, Black males. Also,
the Social Germ Transmission of Racism and Inequality (SGTRI) conceptual model developed
by the event hosts will be shared through the lens of the epidemiological triangle.

Tuesday, June 15 | 1:30–2:30 p.m. | Zoom event Hosted by Donn Worgs, professor, TU political science

This session explores the nebulous idea of freedom, from the 19th century to now and
how laws constrain and confine liberty.

Wednesday, June 16 | 12–1 p.m. | Zoom eventHosted by Tia Howard, TU Career Center

Redlining in Baltimore has had numerous effects on housing ownership in Black communities.
However, redlining was and still is a national concern. This session will compare
Baltimore’s and the nation’s redlining histories and the challenges that are prevalent
today.

Thursday, June 17 | 9 a.m.= 4:30 p.m. | Zoom Event Hosted by the TU Writing Center

As the country begins its long-awaited reckoning with institutional racism, colleges
and universities have been engaging deeply in the ethical dilemma of our time: how
do our institutional structures and practices contribute to the problem of silencing,
marginalizing, minoritizing and otherwise harming black and indigenous students of
color? What do we need to change to create not just a passively inclusive atmosphere
for students, but an actively anti-racist one?

This fully online virtual symposium will feature a series of five virtual workshops
designed to address writing instruction across the TU curriculum, including workshops
focused on first year writing (ENG 102 and TSEM), graduate student writing support,
tutoring, international and multilingual student support, and linguistic justice.

Friday, June 18 |12–1 p.m. and 7–8 p.m.Hosted by the TU Dance Company

This powerful artistic presentation depicts the persistence needed to find justice
and freedom—individually and systemically—while at the same time challenging the audience
to confront and dismantle all structures of oppression.

For a complete list Towson University’s Juneteenth events, as well as a list of resources,
visit the Towson University Juneteenth page.

By Kyle Hobstetter | June 7, 2021

This press release was produced by Towson University. The views expressed here are the author’s own.