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Heather Wasklewicz tags: Adults | Teens
June 19, 2020
In our more than 150-year history, Portland Public Library’s mission has been to promote a city of readers through access to learning and opportunities for the free and full expression of ideas by all.
Portland Public Library is a central institution in Greater Portland that is accessible and free to all who seek its resources. However, the recent murders of Black men and women, magnifying years of racial injustice, impel us to recognize that PPL must take action to dismantle racism in our systems — education, healthcare, law enforcement, employment, and others — especially for the Black community and other people of color.
To fully embrace the Library’s mission and live our values, we must examine and be accountable for our practices, internally and externally, and structure new ways forward. We commit immediately to:
Review policies and change those that result in inequitable treatment of all who access the Library
Intentionally develop the Library Board and Staff to reflect and magnify the rich diversity of our Greater Portland community
Equip the Library Board and Staff for greater self-knowledge and understanding about their role in anti-racism
Build collections that tell the many stories and images of our evolving community
Initiate programs and dialogues that encourage broad and divergent perspectives to engage with one another and advance a community committed to equity and racial justice.
Join with community partners in all sectors who share our commitment to actively identify and break down barriers to racial justice and equity
Join us in our work to achieve racial and social justice. We will know we are living our commitment when we all hold each other accountable.
Sarah Campbell, Executive Director
Peter Richardson, PPL Board of Trustees, President
Stephenson, Mrs. Charles (Grace Murray). [Emancipation Day Celebration band, June 19, 1900], photograph, June 19, 1900; University of North Texas Libraries, The Portal to Texas History, https://texashistory.unt.edu; crediting Austin History Center, Austin Public Library.
Why do we eat the foods we do on Juneteenth?
Juneteenth originated in Texas and with that, the foods eaten during this celebration have a strong history in the South.
After slavery enslaved people began to recall and re-construct their experience through the celebration of Juneteenth. The practice of eating red foods—red cake, barbecue, punch and fruit– may owe its existence to the enslaved Yoruba and Kongo brought to Texas in the 19th century. For both of these cultures the color red is the embodiment of spiritual power and transformation. Enslavement narratives from Texas recall an African ancestor being lured using red flannel cloth, and many of the charms and power objects used to manipulate invisible forces required a red handkerchief. It’s clear that even in slavery’s aftermath; Afro-Texans had a rich food culture, created under adversity in communities with rich cultural origins and a diversity of influences, with a strong root in the foodways and cultures of West and Central Africa.
More on red foods:
Red foods are customary for Juneteenth, the crimson a symbol of ingenuity and resilience in bondage. Watermelon, Texas Pete hot sauce and red velvet cake are abundant. A strawberry pie wouldn’t be out of place. Spicy hot links on the grill — most commonly made with coarsely ground beef, and artificially dyed red — are a Juneteenth staple, too, and ”a distinctive African-American contribution to barbecue,” said Adrian Miller, a James Beard award-winning author and soul food expert.
Red drinks, like strawberry soda and Texas-made Big Red pop, generally rule the Juneteenth bar, and link present to past. ”Two traditional drinks from West Africa that had a lot of social meaning are kola nut tea and bissap,” Mr. Miller said. (Bissap is more commonly known as hibiscus tea.) Both came to the Americas with the slave trade; red kola nuts and hibiscus pods colored the water in which they were steeped.
Taylor, Nicole. “Hot Links and Red Drinks: A Juneteenth Tradition.” New York Times, 14 June 2017, p. D3(L). Gale OneFile: News, link.gale.com/apps/doc/A495524718/STND?u=maine&sid=bookmark-STND&xid=948834f4. Accessed 20 June 2024.
Poet Danez Smith sings out poems of love and intimacy in their 2020 collection Homie. In the poem “my president” they affirm all those who are their people, supporting their mama for president and their grandma for president and trans girls for president and teachers and birds and neighbors who hold the door open for them when their arms are full of laundry and the dude at the pizza spot and the children who they’d elect too, like “jonathan, eleven /…blog writer, young genius, community activist, curls tight / as pinky swears, black as my nation i trust the world in his tender / blooming hands, i trust him to tell us which rivers are safe to drink / & which hold fish like a promise.”
There’s a whole Danez Smith world in this book, a world’s expanse of observation and feeling, life and motion, elegy and ode, and the nation they create in these verses is for their beloved friends, their fam. They call their loves. The morning is a soft shawl. Texts arrive at just the right time. Trees are slow green explosions. Their anthem is mighty.
