News

‘It Means Unity’: Juneteenth Bike Parade and Community Picnic at Broad Street Park

By Tyler Maheu
EAGLE TIMES STAFF
CLAREMONT – On Monday, June 19, area organizations are teaming for a Juneteenth Bike Parade and Community Picnic at Broad Street Park.

The event will begin at 5:30 p.m., just after the raising of the LGBTQ+ Pride Flag by TLC Rural Outright and Rural Pride, both in Sullivan County, with bikes lining up at 6 p.m. and departing the park at 6:19 p.m.

Bikers will follow a two-mile loop back to the park, before finishing the evening with a picnic. According to event co-organizer Whitney Skillen, Claremont, the parade symbolizes the time that passed, and the distance traveled, to notify the people of Galveston, TX, that all enslaved people had been freed on June 19, 1865.

Skillen said the community picnic will be a space to honor those who were enslaved, celebrate freedom, and the end of chattel slavery in the U.S.

“It will also uplift the progress we have made as a society, and recognize the struggles we have yet to overcome,” she said.

This will be Skillen’s first time organizing this event, along with Jonathan and Jennifer Nelson, members of Arrowhead Recreation Club and the Sugar River Rotary Club, both in Claremont.

“Juneteenth to me is about freedom,” she said. “It means unity, and the recognition that every single person born here is an American. It is important to recognize the ugly parts of our past, while recognizing and never quitting on trying to make progress.”

For more information on the event, please visit their Facebook page at https://fb.me/e/2E98RLxP3.

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