Black Scranton Project will commemorate Juneteenth on Friday with a more low-key celebration than its usual block party.<\/p>\n
Glynis Johns, founder and CEO of the Black Scranton Project, said throwing the block party just wasn\u2019t possible. Instead, there will be an open house from 2 to 6 p.m. at its headquarters at 1902 N. Main Ave.<\/p>\n
\u201cWith everything happening politically and everything happening with funding for arts and cultures, we just don\u2019t have it this year,\u201d Johns said. \u201cEverything\u2019s way more expensive. Utilities are crazy. We already don\u2019t get that much support just being a DIY organization. There\u2019s a lot of things that we had to work on, and sometimes that comes with sacrifices.\u201d<\/p>\n
Juneteenth is a federal holiday observed June 19 that commemorates the day news of emancipation for enslaved people in the United States reached Galveston, Texas.<\/p>\n
Johns is still dedicated to honoring the holiday \u2014 and the Black Scranton Project\u2019s 7th birthday as a nonprofit, which also falls on June 19.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s something worth celebrating, remembering and reminding people of,\u201d Johns said. \u201cWe\u2019re not not doing Juneteenth this year. We\u2019re just changing how we\u2019re doing things. We were all looking forward to the block party, but I didn\u2019t have enough support to make it happen, so it\u2019s a sad and unfortunate thing, but it\u2019s still going to be fun. And that\u2019s not saying we won\u2019t ever do it again.\u201d<\/p>\n
Johns said the open house is a time for the community to connect, reflect on the holiday and learn something new. The event will feature photography displays depicting the organization\u2019s achievements as well as refreshments and music. Johns will also lead a presentation at the beginning of the event outlining what the Black Scranton Project is.<\/p>\n
Since this year is also the 250th anniversary of the United States, Johns said it\u2019s important to recognize where Black Americans fit in, noting that their stories and Juneteenth celebrations are an integral part of American identity.<\/p>\n
\u201cOnly 100 years have people been really focusing on archiving Black history and Black story and the Black experience through the Black freedom struggle, which includes Juneteenth, so all of those things are in a parallel right now,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n
Support through donations to the Black Scranton Project is welcome online or at the open house.<\/p>\n
\u201cBecause it\u2019s Black Scranton\u2019s birthday, bring Black Scranton a gift,\u201d Johns said. \u201cIt could be a pack of paper towels, cleaning supplies, cleaning up the debris around once a month.\u201d<\/p>\n
In Wilkes-Barre, the UNITY Collective will host a Juneteenth block party Friday from 4-9 p.m. on Public Square. The event will feature live music, vendors and food.<\/p>\n
Also Friday, Wilkes University kicks off its annual LitFest, which continues through June 25. It features a screening Friday of \u201cAlways, Most of the Time,\u201d a short film written by Black author R. Alan Brooks, at 7 p.m. at the Dorothy Dickson Darte Center for the Performing Arts.<\/p>\n
The event will be hosted by Angelique Palmer, poet and spoken word instructor at Wilkes, and will follow the screening with a talk-back by Brooks, a graphic novelist and comics writer.<\/p>\n
David Hicks, director of creative writing, said the Maslow Family Graduate Program in Creative Writing has been hosting readings by Black writers for the last six years.<\/p>\n
\u201cBlack writers have historically been shut out or repressed from the publishing industry, and it\u2019s really important to provide a celebration of them and their work, not only for our students but for our whole community,\u201d Hicks said. \u201cIf we hear from different writers with different voices, then we grow into a more tolerant society and expand our empathy and storytelling abilities. Anytime we get to hear from artists in the Black community it\u2019s eye-opening, revelatory and important.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Black Scranton Project will commemorate Juneteenth on Friday with a more low-key celebration than its usual block party.…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":222568,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[15],"tags":[201,182,803,139,28,178,180,179,289,802,2685],"class_list":["post-222567","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-scranton","tag-lackawanna-county","tag-local-news","tag-luzerne-county","tag-news","tag-pennsylvania","tag-scranton","tag-scranton-headlines","tag-scranton-news","tag-things-to-do","tag-top-stories-cvc","tag-wilkes-barre"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/222567","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=222567"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/222567\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/222568"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=222567"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=222567"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=222567"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}