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Juneteenth Ceremony Inspires Reflection, Call to Action

While the sky poured rain onto the heads of almost 100 people gathered for the city’s inaugural Juneteenth ceremony Wednesday, the Rev. Marshall Davis consecrated water to bless the spot where slaves were sold decades ago in Wheeling.

Davis, of Macedonia Baptist Church, blessed Market Plaza while remarking on the change of circumstances that brought people to that spot more than 150 years apart in time.

“In the past this was a place of sorrow, but today it’s a place of great joy,” he said. “This is the place where people came, filled with depression from being separated from their families, but today we all come together, unified — black, white, male, female, rich, poor — we’re all one, all citizens.”

Davis was happy to honor Wheeling for agreeing to host Juneteenth ceremonies starting this year.

“Today, I am very happy, I’m glad, to be a part of this celebration, to be able to stand on this ground where once terrible things happened, knowing that from this day forth, nothing but great things will happen here.”

Underground Railroad Museum curator John Mattox also thanked Wheeling for inviting the celebrations back each year going forward. The museum is located in Flushing.

“Today, we do not look for politics, we look for recognition,” Mattox said. “And the good government of Wheeling, West Virginia, has given us that opportunity, to celebrate here every year hereafter.”

Mattox gave a brief history of Juneteenth, which celebrates the day the Emancipation Proclamation was announced in Galveston, Texas. The order was read by Union Army Gen. Gordon Granger, joined by 2,000 troops, a few weeks after the surrender of the Army of the Trans-Mississippi — the last major Confederate army to surrender in the American Civil War.

Rabbi Joshua Leif of Temple Shalom spoke on the introspection necessary to do good in the world.

“We stand here on this hallowed ground, made sacred not by the words we say but by the profane actions that took place upon it more than a century and a half ago. Human beings, bought and sold on this very ground,” Leif said.

Leif mused on the willing denial of humanity necessary to condone slavery, which he said was in opposition to the scriptures, which the Jewish people were quite familiar with.

“We have to think that the ‘other’ is not truly our neighbor, that somehow someone who looks different than us is less than us … and indeed, less than human” he said. “Our sacred tradition tells us that we were slaves in the desert, and those days are long gone and nearly forgotten.”

Leif said he recently was asked how he could speak to the plight of the black community; he responded that he need not be old to want to care for the elderly, nor disabled or gay to seek to protect the rights of those who are, and that as a Jew, he was familiar with disenfranchisement, though he spoke from a position of privilege.

“The beauty of American democracy is not that the majority rules. The beauty of democracy is that the majority makes the rules to protect the rights of the minority,” he said. “As we look back on all that has been done, and how far we’ve come as a community, we must look inward at how far we still have to go.

“There are people who are still bought, sold and trafficked on these streets. There are people still enslaved by addiction on these streets. There are still people in the chains of poverty on these very streets. … We are the agents in partnership with the divine whose task is to be completed — to bring the gift of freedom to others just as it was brought to Galveston.”

Wheeling Mayor Glenn Elliott read a proclamation that City Council passed the day before, recognizing the city’s historical role in the slave trade.

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